New Zealand & Australia Vacation Review: Land, Sea & Mountains, Sydney, Melbourne, Christchurch Tram, Auckland, Wine & Wildlife

We visited Australia and New Zealand for a week each.  It was a long flight from Orlando to LAX (5 hrs.) and then LAX to Sydney (15 hrs.) and we did not sleep on either flight.  Sydney was great with 3 trips (land & harbor cruise, Blue Mts.) and a leisure day which spent at the Aquarium.  We flew to Melbourne and had 2 road trips (Yarra Valley wine tour & Oceania / penguins march and a leisure day (which was a bust because we wanted to take the city tram tour but that tram never showed up).  Onto to Queenstown and toured to Milford Sound & went to the Time Tripper underwater experience on our leisure day.   Our B&B house was a very friendly place to stay.  We flew to Christchurch next and had a problem when the NZ Customs asked if we had any batteries in our checked in luggage and when they scanned the bag, they found some unused battery packs which they confiscated / could have told us before they opened our bags.  We had originally been scheduled to drive from Queenstown to Christchurch but after seeing Aussie and NZ drivers, we did not want to risk the drive.  In Christchurch, to toured to the mountains by train and bus; it poured buckets all day and the best part was when we stopped to feed sheep in the rain.  The next day we took a punt (boat) on the Avon and took the tram to visit Christchurch. We flew to Auckland and stayed at a hotel which was next to the Sky Tower which we visited and saw all of Auckland from 50 floors about the ground.  We flew back to the USA from Auckland to San Francisco (14 hrs.) and from SFO to Orlando (5 hrs.); another long flight which little to no sleep.  The travel company helped us plan this tour and changed things as we needed to have them change.