We got up early and said good-bye to Tommy, Mallory, and the girls. Similar to when we arrived, a complimentary car ride to the airport was provided for premium cabin passengers. So, we took advantage of the free ride.
The Abu Dhabi Airport is Etihad’s hub. There is a completely separate terminal entrance for Business and First Class passengers, complete with bellhops waiting to take your luggage.
The final destination…Here at last. It was definitely bittersweet. I loved all the traveling we did and could have absolutely gone for more. On the other hand, I was dying to see our dogs. Also, being home and sleeping in our own bed was very appealing as well. Alyce was definitely ready to head home.
Our last stop was almost like a semi-transition to being home. I had ran into my friend from high school, Tommy, at wedding party for another friend not too long back. I told him about our trip – including a planned stop in the UAE.
Tommy, his wife (Mallory, who was in Alyce’s high school class), and his two daughters live in Abu Dhabi, while he works there in the oil field. We said we’d need to meet up when we were there and left it at that for the time being.
Usually, I post my concluding thoughts in my daily wrap up. With so many days/destinations in Australia and New Zealand, those wrap ups were plenty long enough as is. So I broke my concluding thoughts on each country out here.
New Zealand Concluding Thoughts
We loved New Zealand. We went to a lot of places and did a lot of things on this trip, but – if you made us pick a favorite spot – it would probably be New Zealand and especially the South Island. It is probably not fair considering we spent 18 days in New Zealand and much less in most other places…But, oh well, that is our answer.
Everywhere we went was very safe. We caught some of the local news shows, and rarely was there any crime to report. The people were very friendly and helpful on top of that.
The entire country was very beautiful, with a variety of landscapes. There was also a wide variety of things to do at all potential price points.
Maldives Wrap Up
The Maldives were the last addition to our trip (along with the corresponding transit stop in the UAE). I was pushing for some stops in Africa and Europe; Alyce reigned me back in and said enough…probably for the best.
Still, I had one last bullet left to fire…The tropical paradise known as the Maldives.
Alyce was resistant at first, like most things with the trip. But, she opened up to this addition relatively easily. Our final itinerary was set.
The Maldives are a chain of island atolls in the middle of the Indian Ocean. There are 1192 islands in the chain, 192 of which are inhabited. The entire country’s population is just over 300,000 people and about a third of the population resides in the capital island of Male.
For just about the previous 40 days of the trip, we had been in native English speaking countries (Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand). We would be leaving that comfort zone.
But, we honestly were looking forward to it. We were excited to get to an exotic and new destination. Plus, Bali is heavily tourist driven, so they are pretty accommodating to English speakers (similar to the areas we went to in Thailand).
Bali is an island in the archipelago of Indonesia. I was pretty surprised to learn when planning that Indonesia is the 4th largest country in the world by population at 237 million people. Only China, India, and the US are larger.
The vast majority of the Indonesian population is muslim, and several of the provinces are governed under Sharia Law (Islamic Law). Bali is its own province (governing region) within Indonesia and is unique in that the population of Bali is almost exclusively Hindu.
The scope of this portion of the trip evolved greatly over the course of planning for the trip. At first, it was nothing…maybe a day trip on the Great Ocean Road from Melbourne. Then it was drive the Great Ocean Road in a day to Adelaide and do day trips from there to Kangaroo Island and the Barossa Valley. It didn’t take me too long to figure out that was a horrible idea.
The final itinerary ended up at 7 nights, and I’m glad it did. This was one of my favorite portions of the trip (especially South Australia). Alyce really liked it too, though it may have lost a point or two in her book for being more rustic.
The Great Ocean Road (“GOR”) is a 150 mile coastal highway commissioned by Australia to put soldiers returning from World War I to work. It is also the world’s largest war memorial, being dedicated to soldiers that passed in WWI.
Oh, hello again Australia. We’re very exci……Let’s be honest. At this point of the trip, all of the traveling was starting to wear on us a little bit – some more than others.
We loved New Zealand and were sad to leave. Just about everywhere else we went we were going someplace completely new, so you weren’t sad to leave because you had something new and exciting to look forward to. Not here, we were back to Australia…Not to say we didn’t enjoy Australia the first go around – we loved it too. I think we had just hit a travel lull.
Still, the show must go on. Melbourne is the second largest city in Australia (4.25 Million people) and is the capital of the state of Victoria. It was the biggest/most prominent city for most of Australia’s history, but only in the last 40-50 years has Sydney surpassed it.
The cities are similar in many ways, though I think Melbourne has a more “hip” vibe (for lack of a better term). Melbourne also lacks the iconic landmarks that Sydney possesses. Basically, Melbourne plays a Chicago or San Francisco to Sydney’s New York.
I was pretty excited to get to the South Island of New Zealand. The North Island was great, and everything I had read said that the South Island was even better.
The South Island –despite being the geographically larger of the two New Zealand islands – has only 1/3 the population of the North Island. In fact Auckland alone is home to more people than the entire South Island. Christchurch is the largest city on the South Island, and it is still recovering from devastating 2011 earthquakes.
Still, the people who call the South Island home live in one of the most scenic places on earth.
Day 1 (Golden Bay)
The North Island had treated us well, but it was time to move on to the South Island. We got up early to head over to the ferry. You have to be at the ferry and checked in at least an hour before it leaves. And this is not a ferry like you typically think of (at least in my case). It was huge – more like a ship at 600 feet long with 10 decks.
