Said farewell to Yvonne & Tony yesterday - they fly back to Shanghai this morning - so now we focus on what next - New Zealand and North America.
We have flights booked to Auckland on Tuesday 6th August, so another 2 weeks in Sydney and a chance to catch up with Sam and Gav when they get back from their NA tour. Turns out that whilst brits don't need visas to enter NZ, you do need a return or onward ticket, so we have also booked onward flights to LA for October 21st as a nominal date - we can move them if we need to, but that would give us 11 weeks to explore the country and given the rate at which we have seen Oz we think that is sufficient.
We will stay in Auckland for the first week, get banking sorted and have an appointment for US tourist visas on August 8th. If we get US visas the hope is that we can stay longer on each visit than if we rely on the visa waiver program which only allows you in for 90 days at a time, and also we can re-enter from Canada or Mexico, for which the VWP does not work the same way. We thought about getting these in Sydney before flying on, but the wait for an appointment and subsequent processing time was too variable to be sure we would get our passports back in time for our NZ flights. In theory in Auckland we should get passports back within a couple of days, but processing can take up to 3 months, so hedge our bets by doing it as early as possible in the visit.
Then after seeing Auckland from the comfort of a hotel, we will hire a camper van and head off around the rest of the place. Given the length of time and the need to fix a departure date we have decided it will be easier and probably as cheap to rent rather than buy again and sell on. Even though we sold tigger quite quickly in the scheme of things, NZ is a much smaller population and its too big a chance to take to mess up the onward arrangements.
So, another 2 weeks of kicking back and enjoying Manly - blue skies and sunshine again today. I would have gone for a ride but I sold my bike yesterday, so may be a walk up to North Heads...
We have flights booked to Auckland on Tuesday 6th August, so another 2 weeks in Sydney and a chance to catch up with Sam and Gav when they get back from their NA tour. Turns out that whilst brits don't need visas to enter NZ, you do need a return or onward ticket, so we have also booked onward flights to LA for October 21st as a nominal date - we can move them if we need to, but that would give us 11 weeks to explore the country and given the rate at which we have seen Oz we think that is sufficient.
We will stay in Auckland for the first week, get banking sorted and have an appointment for US tourist visas on August 8th. If we get US visas the hope is that we can stay longer on each visit than if we rely on the visa waiver program which only allows you in for 90 days at a time, and also we can re-enter from Canada or Mexico, for which the VWP does not work the same way. We thought about getting these in Sydney before flying on, but the wait for an appointment and subsequent processing time was too variable to be sure we would get our passports back in time for our NZ flights. In theory in Auckland we should get passports back within a couple of days, but processing can take up to 3 months, so hedge our bets by doing it as early as possible in the visit.
Then after seeing Auckland from the comfort of a hotel, we will hire a camper van and head off around the rest of the place. Given the length of time and the need to fix a departure date we have decided it will be easier and probably as cheap to rent rather than buy again and sell on. Even though we sold tigger quite quickly in the scheme of things, NZ is a much smaller population and its too big a chance to take to mess up the onward arrangements.
So, another 2 weeks of kicking back and enjoying Manly - blue skies and sunshine again today. I would have gone for a ride but I sold my bike yesterday, so may be a walk up to North Heads...
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