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If you are an eager, fairly adventurous traveler then Australia and New Zealand are probably destinations that have been swimming in some subdirectory of your travel ambitions.Down under has lots of appeal. It’s English speaking, exotic, remote, filled with crazy looking plants and animals. Many Australians combine the best character qualities from around the globe: hardiness, humor and cordiality. Aussies are justifiably famous for outgoing character, and New Zealanders follow suit in their slightly more reserved manner. The Australians are masters of a vast, isolated, largely desert continent and their outlook shows independence of spirit and loads of aptitude. When the vast interior of your country is an inhospitable outback, then your ring of vibrant coastal cities are treated like causes for celebration, and for visitors this feeling is infectious.Like America, the Australian national history is short (and rowdy). Perhaps for this reason the Australians, like many Americans, are a people ready to welcome strangers with an open hand and broad smile, no questions asked. They like to play around with their own lively disposition and vernacular (Australian slang dictionary). One afternoon down under amongst friendly, helpful, vigorous Australians is usually enough to charm any visitor.The Kiwis (New Zealanders) typically have a slightly more gentrified, English disposition than the maverick Australians. The New Zealand outlook perhaps reflects that they are the smaller cousin in the Australian-New Zealand sphere of influence, and that they have more to show and more to lose than the desert-baked, walkabout Australians. Unlike the arid vastness of Australia, the Kiwis enjoy two main islands of incredible lushness that combine much of the topographical grandeur of Europe with the stunning, tropical features of the south Pacific islands.The natural abundance of New Zealand can stop you cold: tropical beaches, rain forests, boiling hot springs, towering Alps and blocked, English-like farmland. From half a world away it is easy to generalize the differences between New Zealand and Australia, but they are essentially different transplanted peoples making their home in similar geographic area. Australia is the land of the kangaroo, a hardy, indigenous animal that can survive traveling over deserts using the most energy conservative locomotive method known to any species on earth. By contrast, New Zealand is the land of the sheep, reliant on lots of water and grass, and transplanted wholly from the mother country (in New Zealand sheep outnumber people). Australia seems resolved with itself and its indigenous aboriginal peoples, where New Zealand seems to be looking over its shoulder back at England (and modern New Zealand has a somewhat awkward relationship with its native Maori peoples).What finally made me visit Australia and New Zealand was the record summer heat in Europe during 2003. I had two precious weeks to use in August, but where would I go? Based on the news of heat-related deaths in Europe the southern hemisphere looked like a great solution (it is winter there when it is summer in the northern hemisphere).European ski enthusiasts have long known the trick of turning summer into winter by training in the ski slopes of Queenstown, New Zealand. Reversing the seasons is not a motive calculated into many recreational travel plans, but it should be. What you are looking for, after all, is the chance to get away, change the scenery, to see something new. There can be no more profound change than traveling to the other side of the earth while reversing your seasons. On top of this, you find a new world of plants and animals. School kids know about wallabies and echidnas, but those animals are just the headliners. Imagine a world where green and red parrots fly around in pairs and land in a tree above you. Imagine being awakened in the morning by a bird that sounds like a bell, or another that makes a complicated, resonant call like a concerto played on a whistle flute (birds down under page).In short, it’s completely different, yet comfortably similar to visit Australia and New Zealand.The people are different (but familiar).The food is different (but familiar). Local chefs train in Europe but insist on returning to open their own restaurants in their own home towns.A burgeoning wine industry provides a glorious, sassy collection for you to sample at a fraction of the price of these same labels offered by New York?s biggest liquor importers.

Flights :

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Australian travel choices:

What to see in Australia? This is a tough call because you might have a secret hankering to visit the outback or the more remote regions, whereas my focus was to skip through for a sense of Australia and then spend serious time in New Zealand.Sydney is pretty much a requirement on any list of Australia destinations. Many guide books will favor a list of Australian destinations including: Newcastle, Byron Bay, Fraser Island, world-class diving round the Great Barrier Reef, Cairns, Darwin, Alice Springs, Marlborough and Hobart (in Tasmania). But this list is a ridiculous simplification. You have an entire continent to consider, a task only made slightly easier by the fact that most of the good stuff is clustered at the edges. A bonobo with a handful of darts and a map will have as good a chance as you of picking great stops in Australia unless you task yourself to read up. In the absence of a Michelin Green Guide, I find that a good overview resource is to read some of the “been there” reviews posted on epinions. Granted, this is not the most refined resource, because anybody can post just about anything, but most of the readers are conscientious and after reading a few you will see the same names start to pop up and soon you will see a pattern emerge. With the pattern established, take a look at some of the “best of” lists published by the commercial guides (Frommers has “best of” lists in a load of different catagories, hotels, restaurants, museums, beaches – here’s best Australian experiences with links to other lists at the left margin.)

New Zealand travel choices:

Good destinations in New Zealand can be a harder call than Australia because the good stuff isn’t as neatly collected at the coasts or near the cities.True, New Zealand cities have a remarkable spectrum of different personalities.Auckland has the feel of a clean, modern international shipping hub with bridges and waterways and ocean liners always in view.Wellington also has a maritime flavor, but it is terraced and secluded with a protected, regional feel.Christchurch is like a prim, flat, English shire town with a lazy, two-foot-deep river meandering through the center.Dunedin has a dyed-in the-wool Scottish influence while Queenstown is an extreme sport, party town full of action and youth.To approach a trip to New Zealand you first need to assimilate the different offerings of the north and south islands. In my view most guidebooks do a poor job of helping the traveler evaluate the relative travel value of the two islands. It’s as if there is such a surfeit of great things to do that the books are doing their best to pack it all in and lose their power to discriminate between choices.You can visit both islands, but plan on air transport if your trip is any shorter than three weeks, because the distances are considerable. It’s hard to counsel in favor of visiting just one island. The north island has plenty to see, and it has Auckland, the international departure point, but the southern island has the most vibrant scenic beauty (the Lord of the Rings movies were filmed on the southern island of New Zealand). If you want to visit the southern island alone you have to figure out your return flights to Newzealand, which almost certainly will require a change in Auckland, or a return to Australia before you can connect to a US flight.The north island is warmer throughout the year and is influenced more by beaches of all kinds rocky shores, black sand, white sand as well as geothermal hot springs.The south island is considerably cooler in temperature year round (Christchurch is sufficiently southern that it is where the US Antarctica programs stage their supply and transport connections with the rest of the world). The north and east coasts of the southern island of New Zealand also boast beautiful beaches, but the prominent geographic feature is the Alps that run in a spine up the mountains. (Queenstown, the sports capital of the southern island, is pictured at right.) Unlike the northern island, the southern island has glaciers and alpine vistas and numerous ski resorts. At the far, southwestern reaches of the northern island you have Fiordland, with Norwegian-class peaks rising like a wall out of the water to heights as much as a mile.