Melanesian Marvels on the Oceania Riviera
2/16/2026 to 3/18/2026

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Page 1 – Bali Pre-Trip - Days 1-3
Page 2 – Bali Pre-Trip - Days 4-5; Embarkation, Ship; Ports of Call: Komodo, Indonesia
Page 3 – Ports of Call: Kupang, West Timor Indonesia; Darwin, Australia; Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea; Alotau, Papua New Guinea
Page 4 – Ports of Call: Honiara, Solomon Islands; Luganville, Vanuatu; Port Vila, Vanuatu; Lautoka, Fiji; Suva, Fiji
Page 5 – Ports of Call: Noumea, New Caledonia; Sydney Post-Trip - Day 1
Page 6 – Sydney Post-Trip - Day 2-4

Ports of Call (Continued)

Post-Trip in Sydney, Australia – Day 2

For our second day, we planned to take a half day walking tour with a company called City Unscripted (https://www.cityunscripted.com/australia/sydney-tours/half-day-personalized-experience-in-sydney). I booked the tour in November and was assigned a tour guide. In January I was informed that my tour guide had retired and another was assigned to me. In February, the new tour guide had to cancel due to medical issues, and I was assigned another tour guide. Yesterday morning they told me that the latest tour guide couldn’t do the tour and that they were looking for another one and would get back to me shortly. At 3:00 PM they finally admitted that they couldn’t get us a guide. They offered to switch to another day, which wouldn’t work because we had a different tour our only other full day here. Since that didn’t work, they gave us a refund. Had they told us earlier, I might have been able to move things around or arrange for a different tour. In all my years of booking private tours, I have never had anything like this happen. If you are looking for a private tour in Sydney, I recommend that you avoid City Unscripted.

We decided that instead of the planned walking tour, we would do our own self-guided tour starting off with a harbor boat tour. We booked a 10:15 AM 1.5-hour sightseeing cruise with the highly rated Sydney Princess Cruises (https://www.sydneyprincesscruises.com.au/). We went down to Circular Quay early to enjoy the scenery and kill time before the cruise. The Cunard Queen Anne cruise ship was docked there. We also enjoyed the Sydney skyline.

We decided to see exactly where the boat was docked. We found the Sydney Princess counter where we were to check in, but there was no boat or anybody waiting for the tour. We checked in with the agent on duty. He said due to mechanical problems they had to cancel the 10:15 AM cruise. Good grief, another cancellation! He told us we could move to a 4:00 PM sightseeing cruise or do the Sydney Harbour Discovery Lunch Cruise instead at no additional cost. This tour was a 2 ¼ hour tour with lunch that costs $20 per person more. So we would get a 50% longer cruise and a lunch. That was a no-brainer. The only downside was that the tour didn’t start until noon, so we had a couple hours to kill. Since we planned to walk around the historic Rocks area after the cruise, we moved it to before the cruise. With the Rocks being next to where the terminal the Queen Anne was at, it was a short walk there.

On the way we first saw a beautiful statue of a woman’s head in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art.

We could also see the opera house across the quay.

The Rocks area is the site of the first European settlement in Sydney in 1788. In 1971 the Rocks was to be demolished to make way for a high rise development. The local residents and environmentalists came together to fight it. Thank goodness they succeeded. The old buildings in the Rocks are a treat.

In one section you can see why the area was called the Rocks with the high rock cliffs.

We came to a monument called the First Impressions. It’s a 3-sided sandstone relief celebrating the arrival of the first settlers of Australia. It has the carvings of a convict, soldier and settler family. It is quite unique.

Across the way were some pretty buildings that were partially obstructed by a large tree.

We continued walking through the area enjoying the scenery.

The Rocks is a special place. We were glad we were able to enjoy it.

When we returned to the boat launch, there were lots of people waiting to get on boat that hadn’t arrived yet. This is the best photo I got of the boat pulling in.

We boarded the boat and sat at a table until we received instructions on what we would be doing. Reviews of the cruise recommended sitting on the starboard side of the boat. They were right, since it was the best view of the shoreline.

They said they would serve the food after getting out of the quay. That was a good idea since most people wanted to see the Harbor Bridge and Opera House from the water. We got different views of the opera house from the front and the other side with the Harbor Bridge in the background.

We were able to see some of the botanical garden that is next to the opera house.

Once lunch was ready, everyone got into one of the two lines to fill their plates. I read good reviews about the lunch, but the food exceeded my expectations. It was a delicious meal.

In the middle of lunch, I went to the upper deck to see if there were some photo ops. We had a nice view of the Sydney Tower standing out above the skyline.

The upper deck was a great place to be during the cruise. We could see everything. There were benches to sit on where Cathy and I spent a good deal of time. It was very comfortable with the moderate temperature and cooling breeze. The seating area at the front of the boat was very popular, but we liked our location best.

We passed by the Point Piper area of very expensive homes on the water where the very wealthy and celebrities live. Many homes over $100 million.

The large brown house at the top of the hill with the turret sold for $130 million to a tech billionaire.

The small home between the two larger ones is owned by actor Mark Wahlberg. He paid $100 million for it.

We saw the unique ferry to Manley Beach that has 2 bows and wheelhouses. The engines go both ways. I’ve never seen a boat like that.

We got a kick out of the boat’s captain driving the boat with his feet while he was on his mobile phone. Probably not the safest way.

The scenery along the harbor is gorgeous.

We could see a section of the Taronga Zoo up a mountain. There are cable car lines that were used to take customers arriving by ferry up there. After 35 years of service, it was closed in 2023. A new $105 million cable car is planned for 2028.

As we returned close to the Harbor Bridge, the guide pointed out a home with a large white object in their yard. It was an actual jawbone of a whale. Another home close by was in a great location.

We next passed by Admiralty House, the official residence of the Governor-General of Australia. It is also where royalty stays when they visit Sydney.

After passing under the bridge, we got our first view of one of Sydney’s most famous landmarks, Luna Park. It was constructed in 1935. It has opened and closed many times due to accidents and/or ownership changes during its history. It has stayed open now since 2004.

The captain stopped and slowly turned the boat around so everyone who wanted could get their photos with the opera house behind the Harbor Bridge. It is a required selfie.

As we came into Darling Harbor, we saw a group of beautiful skyscrapers, the tallest being Crown Sydney, that contains a hotel, residential apartments and a casino. The unusual, curved skyscraper, completed in 2020, is the tallest building in Sydney at 890 feet. It was developed by the James Packer casino group, Crown Resorts. The tower has 8,000 pieces of uniquely cut-glass windows to accommodate the buildings curvature. The development project was not popular resulting in the building being informally referred to as Packer’s pecker. The buildings are still quite gorgeous.

As we moved further into Darling Harbor, we saw the National Maritime Museum with a submarine in front of it.

I liked the Mississippi type river boat along the dock.

As we returned to the dock, I took my final photo of opera house from the water.

We thoroughly enjoyed the harbor cruise. It was a great way to enjoy the beauty of Sydney. We walked back to the hotel passing an interesting fountain and statue.

We walked through Martin Place, the Wall Street of Sydney, where we saw the gorgeous 19th century General Post Office building. It has since been repurposed for restaurants, cafes and commercial offices. I loved the façade over the entrance with a white marble statutory group, featuring Queen Victoria.

In front of the building is the Martin Place Memorial. It commemorates those that served in WW1 and those that died in subsequent conflicts.

Once back at the hotel, we went to the concierge for another restaurant recommendation. Once again, he came through with a winner. We went to a Thai restaurant named Chat Thai. It is a very popular chain restaurant.

Cathy and I shared an outstanding massaman curry. For our main course Cathy had goong gratiem (stir fried king prawns) and I had beef pad thai. We both loved our meals.

On the way back to the hotel, we admired the beautiful old illuminated buildings.

Post-Trip in Sydney, Australia – Day 3

For our last full day of the vacation, we booked a full day tour to the Blue Mountains with Anderson’s Tours (https://andersonstours.com.au), TripAdvisor’s number one experience in Australia. With the meeting time at 6:45AM near the Rocks, we had to wake up extra early. But it was worth it.

We had an outstanding tour guide named Steve. He was everything you want from a tour guide, friendly, helpful, knowledgeable, good speaker and just a great guy.

We had a comfortable van with WIFI that worked out well for the 20 passengers.

Steve said that he hoped it was clear up in the Blue Mountains so that we would get the views. It would take almost two hours, including a comfort stop, to get to the mountains. The time went by quickly with Steve sharing history, stories and information about the area. He also passed out a menu selection list for our lunch. There were many more selections than we expected.

Our first stop was at the Elysian Rock lookout. What a gorgeous place! There were walkways to get different views of the Jamison Valley, so I did take lots of photos.

Steve pointed out the rocks at the end of a cliff to us. This was the back side of the main tour attraction the Three Sisters rock formation. We wouldn’t know it if Steve hadn’t pointed them out. It doesn’t have the appeal as famous view from the other side. Steve took our photo in front of it.

After returning to the bus, it was about a 15-minute drive to the Three Sisters. We walked down to the main Echo Point viewing area to see this rock formation we saw in photos so many times. I took some photo, but down below was what looked like a much better viewing point.

The park has very nice walking paths to the various viewing points. When I arrived at the one that looked best to me, there was a plaque that showed that this was the Queen Elizabeth lookout. This is where she saw the Three Sisters from in 1954.

It is the best viewpoint. I took lots of photos there. We were so glad that we were having great weather to experience the full beauty of the area.

I had to take close ups of the sister's heads.

When we returned to the main park building where they had a shop and small refreshment area, we decided to get some ice cream while waiting for the van to pick us up. I was thrilled to see that they had hokey pokey ice cream. I hadn’t eaten it since I visited New Zealand in 2006. It was the most popular ice cream flavor in that country. It was so good! I hope I don’t have to wait another 20 years to have it again.

Our next destination was to Scenic World (https://www.scenicworld.com.au). It is an attraction that provides so many ways to enjoy this UNESCO World Heritage Site area. When we arrived, there were several tour busses pulling up, so Steve told us we would go to a different attraction first to avoid the crowds. We took the Scenic Cableway, the steepest aerial cable car in the southern hemisphere down to a rain forest. It passes over an 82-foot-tall tower and then descends 1,673-feet to the rain forest station. It was fun and a pretty ride.

I was able to take a photo of the car once at the bottom.

We walked along the rain forest path enjoying the scenery.

This palm tree really grabbed my attention. Quite different from any I have seen before.

Steve stopped at an opening to the Katoomba Coal Mine to tell us the history of it. Mining started there in 1878 and ended in 1945. I liked the statue next to it of a horse and coal car that would have been used in the mine.

There was an opening to a ventilation furnace close by. This would force air out of the mine and pull in fresh air.

Before we got to our next experience, the Scenic Railway, we were able to see one of the old cars that used to be used. These cars were used to move coal and shale up the mountain during the week and tourists during the weekends.

We stopped at the entrance to the Scenic Railway where Steve told us about it being the steepest passenger railway in the world, with the chart showing the other major ones.

As we went down the ramps to the train, we got our first glimpse of it with passengers leaving the cars. This was a significant upgrade from the original cars we just saw. We would enter on one side and exit on the other side.

While waiting for the train to return for us, we appreciated the different view of the Three Sisters above us. I took more photos of it and Steve took our photo.

We looked down and saw that the winged doors were open to the entry side of the trains. We went down and entered the train. We were only able to look up through the ceiling and curved upper edge windows, since there weren’t any side windows.

There wasn’t much to see, especially since much of the ride was through a cutout area of the mountain. I am putting photos in that aren’t that good due to the dirty and curved windows. But it gives you an idea of what we saw during the ride. It was still fun to ride the steep incline train, but not as much of a scenic experience.

We next went over to the Scenic Skyway, the largest aerial cable car in the southern hemisphere. We saw one coming in and I was able to get a photo of the side of the car too. We also got our first view of the Katoomba Falls.

When we boarded the car, I immediately went to the left side, where I would have the best view of the waterfall for photos. Near the front of the car was an open area with bars going across that would allow me to get photos without a dirty window in between.

The car then moved across the Jamison Valley where we could see the Three Sisters on one side and Katoomba Falls on the other. It is a 750 ft multi segmented falls. It was hard to get photos of the full length, but I was able to hold my iPhone out the window and use the wide-angle lens to get it.

We got back on the bus and drove to the Prince Henry Cliffwalk. Those that were interested could walk down over 100 stairs to get closer to the waterfall we just saw. Steve said that the view from the cable car was the best one we could get, so I didn’t bother with it. I was able to get a view of the falls a little way down the path. Plus, I was able to take a photo of a flower I hadn’t seen before, the Mountain Devil. It is endemic to the New South Wales area of Australia.

We had thoroughly enjoyed Scenic World. After leaving, we stopped at a lookout over the Megalong Valley. It was called the Board Head Lookout due to the shape of a pillar. It looked more like a horse to me.

I then walked further down the path to the Cahill’s Lookout. This was one gorgeous valley. I couldn’t stop taking photos.

With it being lunchtime, we drove into the town of Katoomba to go to the One Orient Restaurant. It was a very nice restaurant. I wish that I had taken interior photos. Cathy ordered a chicken Caesar salad and I got fish & chips. Both were outstanding. The other items we saw that our group ordered also looked great and they got very good comments.

After lunch we drove for an hour to Featherdale Wildlife Park (https://www.featherdale.com.au). This was an amazing place with so many of the unique species of animals, birds and reptiles from Australia. One of the things we wanted to do was to get our photo taken with a koala bear. We were surprised at the reasonable price of the photo, just $40 Australian ($28 US). The person we bought the tickets from told us that we should get our photos before doing anything else. I guess they can get busy and we didn’t want to miss our chance. When we got there, we only had a couple people ahead of us. I tried taking some photos of the koala, but between people walking in front of me and the koala eating, it wasn’t easy.

When it was our turn, I was surprised that they offered to take photos with my phone too. We were glad that we were able to touch the back of the Koala to feel its fur. That’s not something you get to do every day. It wasn’t long until they had our photos ready. We couldn’t believe that the package we purchased had a 6 X 9 print, 2-6 X 4 prints and 4 mini-prints, in addition to a digital copy. That was quite a deal! We were thrilled with the photos. Below is the best one they took with my iPhone and their photo.

We walked around park looking at all the Australian wildlife. There were lots of wallabies and many beautiful birds.

We next came to a tree kangaroo, like we saw in Port Moresby. They have a very long tail. This time I was able to see its face.

We then saw more amazing beautirful birds.

The kangaroos were either sleeping or eating, so I finally took this one of them eating. I then came to a more colorful variety of kangaroo that was sitting in a cave.

The park has a nice reptile area also. The snake with the beautiful skin on the left is a diamond python. The one on the right an inland Taipan, the world’s most venomous land snake.

They also had dingos.

I liked the cute short-beaked echnida. Although it looks like a porcupine, it doesn’t throw its spines.

They had a group of little blue penguins or fairy penguins, the smallest penguin species in the world.

I also liked the cute Tasmanian Devil that could bite your leg off with his sharp teeth and strong jaw.

I was amazed to see the huge 5 ft tall Australian Pelicans. I have never seen pelicans anywhere near that large. Since there isn’t anything for perspective, they don’t look as large in the photos. They were really tall.

After leaving the park, we drove to the Olympic Park ferry terminal where Steve said his goodbyes. He did an outstanding job for us. We were so glad we had him as our guide. He gave us ferry tickets that would drop us off at Circular Quay. By doing this, the Anderson tour guides don’t have to fight the traffic into town, and we get to have a ferry ride to see the sights. We arrived at the Circular Quay terminal just after 5:00 PM. It had been a wonderful 9-hour tour that included so many unique experiences. It was a great way to finish up our month-long adventure.

We decided to stop along the way back to the hotel for a beer. We went to a place called the Customs House Bar. As we were enjoying our beer, we decided that we didn’t want to do a big dinner that night. The food that was coming out to the tables looked good and smelled great, so we each ordered one of the best steak sandwiches we have ever eaten.

With us flying home the next day, we did some preliminary packing before spending our last night in Australia.

Post-Trip in Sydney, Australia – Day 4

With us not being picked up by Airports Taxi Transfers until 11:00 AM, we were able to take our time finishing our packing and have a leisurely breakfast nearby. After breakfast, I wanted to see an attraction I read about. It is called Forgotten Songs. It was much closer to the hotel than I realized. The lane has 120 empty bird cages suspended above it. They celebrate those birds which were living in central Sydney "before they were gradually forced out of the city by European settlement". Recordings are played of the songs of fifty bird species which used to live in the central Sydney area on two audio tracks - day birds and night birds. It is a beautiful tribute. This is a link to a YouTube video that will let you experience what I saw: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xlT1c4INS24

We were picked up and arrived at the airport by 11:30 AM. Our first of three flights would begin at 3:15 PM. We had a 9 ¼ hour flight to Hong Kong with an almost 5-hour layover. Than a 15 ½ flight to JFK with a 2 ¼ hour layover before a 3 ½ hour flight to Miami. It would be 35-hour travel day with an hour and half drive home. We were grateful we were in business class on Cathay Pacific. They were most enjoyable flights. Our flight to JFK at 5:45 AM, which worked out great with the TSA issues that were affecting security lines throughout the country. We were able to breeze through immigration and security, thank goodness.

Recap

I had originally been very concerned about visiting this part of the world in the middle of their rainy season. We amazingly never had any rain while touring during any of our portdays, just on a couple sea days and late at night. Our pre-trip in Bali was filled with so many amazing experiences, followed by a wonderful cruise to rarely visited islands. The post-trip in Sydney topped off the wonderful month-long vacation. We were so glad that we decided to do this amazing adventure. It was wonderful!