Our trip around the world Part 1

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14 October 2016

Last night we should have traveled back to Auckland to take a flight out today to Sydney. Due to visa problems, unfortunately this was not the case.

Venezuelans are required to have a visa for Australia. We applied for one over 4 weeks ago and subsequent contacts with the Australian visa authority for North America had given us the (wrong) impression that they would do what it takes to make certain that the visa would be issued before the 14th of October. Sadly enough, this did not happen! Subsequent calls to the center equally did not yield the results that we hoped for. A bummer! All our program in Australia had to be canceled in order to avoid penalties and extra costs. The biggest problem nevertheless is our return to the US: the New Zealand authorities gave us a visa until the 20th of October, so if the visa for Australia does not materialize, we are between a rock and a hard place, because, even just transiting through Sydney, requires a visa. A real mess.

Notwithstanding the difficulties we try to keep up with tourist and vacation activities. As such we did a "duck" tour in a second world war amphibian truck/boat. The tour took us around the "city" and floated on a couple of crater lakes. Educational and entertaining.

On a possitive note: I have to send the mayor of Rotorua a personal note, thanking him for adorning the city with tulips, just to commemorate my visit to the town. There are tulips all over the place. Very nice and thoughtfull......

The day ended with a good dinner at Leonardo's, an Italian restaurant.

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