Was the 17-Hour Flight to Australia Worth It?

Traveling from the U.S. to Australia is no easy feat. In fact if you add in all of our collective travel time it's close to 30 hours straight of traveling. The bulk of that is a grueling 17 1/2 hour flight. I'm not going to lie to you, it's not easy!  But in my opinion, it was definitely worth it.

One of the most important things for me when deciding if I wanted to make the longest trip everrrr was making sure I spent enough time in Australia to justify the flight. We decided to take a little over 2 weeks. Personally, if we went for just a week, I don't think it would have been worth it. You would spend more than 2 full days traveling! And that's just to get to the country! Australia is a big place (and we covered New Zealand, too!) so you have to take into account that you will likely spend even more time traveling between cities if you choose to move around.

I will probably do another post summing up my best airplane hacks, but for now let's say this: invest in a good pillow, move around and check the back of the plane for free snacks! Just like most things in life, great adventure takes hard work. That starts with planning the trip, financing the adventure and then finally traveling to your destination.

If you're nervous about jumping head first into a crazy-long plane trip, maybe build up to it. If you've never traveled internationally before, I recommend starting with a six-hour flight or so. After that, you'll have a good idea if you could handle the insane across-the-world trip to Australia. Even if you are a great flyer, just try to prepare as much as possible. It's going to be awful. But totally worth it.

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That Time We ALMOST Hiked a Glacier - Fox Glacier, NZ

The part of the trip I was arguably the most excited for was Fox Glacier. The plan was to take a helicopter to the top of the glacier and go for one hell of a hike! Unfortunately, weather was not in our favor. It was terribly disappointing (we had flown to the southern island and road tripped out there specifically for this glacier!!) but sometimes that's life. I had no desire to die in a helicopter crash, so I believed them when they said the clouds were too low. While I can't recommend the actual hike, I will say I was happy that we did get a full refund. What can you do.

We did however make the most of it. The town was really cute and we managed to drive out and get a (very distant) glimpse of the glacier.

No, really. That's it. That little bit of white between the mountains. I'm sure it's much cooler up close.

We actually decided to try to make the most of our cancelled trip and took off a day early. The hotel was able to rebook our room so they gave us a refund (which was great!) and we headed down the road to Haast. We tried to enjoy the sights near there, but alas the dumb weather got in the way again. Rain, wind and even a massive power outage pretty much made us just chill out for the night (though we did get a discount because the power was out).

The next morning we got up and headed to Queenstown, which was nice! I'll share some pics of that fun in my next post, so stay tuned! I know this is a bit of a brief post, but hey. My time in Fox Glacier was brief as well. I just thought it was worth sharing that not every travel adventure goes to plan. Sometimes weather gets in the way (like the time I tried to shark cage dive in South Africa!).

If you want help planning your next adventure, check out my website MilesIntoMemoriesTravel.com.