Dave’s Trip To, Around and Into Australia, Sept. 26 – Nov. 23, 2016

I’ve decided to do another cruise blog, this time about our trip on Maasdam across the Pacific to Sydney, then a circumnavigation of Australia, followed by a five-night add-on trip to the Red Center and the Barrier Reef (for the second time – the cruise visits the Reef as well).

I know Btimmer and others are also blogging, but we will no doubt have different experiences, excursions, thoughts and opinions, so I decided to go ahead and do one as well. I don’t have a blog hosting site, so I will be posting directly to Cruise Critic.

I will update the reports as I can, but I know kazu and others experienced a lot of internet outages and slowness on their trip this spring to Hawaii, Tahiti and the Marqueses – we will be doing a lot of days in the Pacific and I expect we will have several times when I will not be able to raise a signal, maybe for days at a time. I will report on each day, but may not be able to update the blog for several days and will then catch up when I can.

Here is a map of our itinerary:

Here is the schedule on Maasdam:

Sept. 26: depart Seattle

Sept. 27: Vancouver, BC

Sept. 28 – Oct. 2: at sea

Oct. 3: Honolulu, HI

Oct. 4: Kona, HI

Oct. 5-8: at sea

Oct 9: Cross International Dateline into Oct. 10

Oct. 11: Apia, Samoa

Oct. 12: at sea

Oct. 13: Suva, Fiji

Oct. 14: Dravuni Island, Fiji

Oct. 15: at sea

Oct. 16: Mystery Island (Anelghowhat), Vanuatu

Oct. 17: Noumea, New Caledonia

Oct. 18-19: at sea

Oct. 20-21: Sydney (overnight)

Oct. 22: at sea

Oct. 23: Brisbane

Oct. 24: at sea

Oct. 25: Hamilton Island

Oct. 26: Cairns

Oct. 27-28: Barrier Reef

Oct. 29: at sea

Oct. 30: Darwin

Oct. 31: at sea

Nov. 1: Komodo Island, Indonesia

Nov. 2: Benoa, Bali, Indonesia

Nov. 3-5: at sea

Nov. 6: Geraldton

Nov 7-8: Freemantle (overnight)

Nov. 9: Albany

Nov. 10-11: at sea

Nov. 12: Adelaide

Nov. 13: Penneshaw, Kangaroo Island

Nov. 14: at sea

Nov. 15: Burnie, Tasmania

Nov. 16: Melbourne

Nov. 17: at sea

Nov. 18: debark in Syndey

We then join the HAL shore add-on tour:

Nov. 18: fly to Alice Springs, stay night

Nov. 19: drive to Ayers Rock, stay night

Nov. 20-21: fly to Cairns, stay 2 nights

Nov. 22: fly to Sydney, stay night

Nov. 23: fly to Seattle via Honolulu

More later,

Dave

Looks like a good trip.

See you on the ship

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See you on the ship

 

Sent from my SM-G930T using Forums mobile app

Thanks! Looking forward to seeing you again.

How does the new carpeting look? I presume just the public areas were done, and not the staterooms.

Dave

Looking forward to your posts.

Sept. 25, pre-cruise activity

When I last blogged, from Oosterdam in Jan.-Feb., I had just retired. Since then, we have moved to “home” in Washington state, and are now living in the Puget Sound area, west across the Sound from Seattle.

We took a ferry to Seattle today, and are spending the night in a hotel prior to boarding Maasdam tomorrow. We did that so we could have dinner with one of our sons and his SO, and to not have to worry about the logistics of catching the ferry tomorrow. We have already booked a taxi to take us to Pier 91 tomorrow morning.

The weather has been delightful this weekend, and is supposed to be fine not only for sailing from Seattle tomorrow, but also for Tuesday in Vancouver.

We have been planning (and paying for :D) this “bucket list” trip for quite a while now and are excited that we finally are about to get underway on one of our favorite HAL ships.

I hope you will join us for the journey.

More later,

Dave

I am looking forward to your posts. The South Pacific and Australia are two of the areas I most want to visit one day. I hope you enjoy your day in my home city of Vancouver.

See you on board tomorrow.

I hope you enjoy your long journey on this cruise and look forward to your updates.

I, too, look forward to meeting you on the ship tomorrow or the next day. I'll be wearing my dark blue Alaska Airlines baseball type cap and a NW themed reddish colored short sleeve shirt. We're all packed and the final checklist items are being marked off tonight.

I've dreamed about doing the circumnavigation for 10 plus years since we first visited Australia. We're staying 10 days post cruise to travel to the Blue Mountains, back to Melbourne to spend time with our exchange daughter and her family and possibly out to Ayers Rock.

Boy this looks like a fun cruise! :) Hope you have a great trip and am looking forward to your postings during the cruise. Oh.. also, welcome to the Pacific Northwest, we knew you were planning on moving here but we were not sure when. Hope the move was easy and simple. :p

Rick & Joyce

It is great to see another blog for this wonderful adventure. I will delight in every tidbit that you are able to post.

Welcome to Washington State, Dave, and Happy Retirement !

Bon Voyage !!!

Barbara

See you on board tomorrow.

Ted, boy you lucky person, you get to do this cruise also! Hope you have a great cruise.

Rick

Have a great cruise. I'll be following along vicariously.

I always enjoy your blogs, so will be following the Trans Pacific journey.

See you on board for the Circumnavigation.

Looking forward to your reports! Have a wonderful cruise:)

Looks like a great trip! Have fun. I look forward to your live report.

Always look forward to your travel blogs. Have a great cruise! Bond Voyage!

Have a wonderful trip. Looking forward to your review and photos!!

Have a great trip, Dave!

Bon voyage! Looking forward to following your cruise until we join you in Sydney for the Australia circumnavigation.

Dan

Always enjoy reading your reports and your itinerary is fabulous.

I'm glad to hear that retirement is going well! I look so forward to "going along" on your cruise. I always love your reports and photos. Happy and Healthy travels!

Will definitely be following your travels!

Bon Voyage! I'm looking forward to your updates!

Smooth Sailing ! :) :) :)