Honeymoon : Phase One : Just Getting to Tasmania

Just getting to Tasmania is not an easy task. We started it out on December 3rd driving from our house in Springdale, UT to St. George. From there, we met the shuttle that took us to the Las Vegas Airport. When we checked in with United, we were met by a very rude woman who was appalled that we did not get our visas for travel to Australia. She made it sound like we would not be able to go on the trip. Well, we talked to someone else and realized that all we needed was to pay another additional fee of $25 a person and we would get our visas. This can be done for free online before your trip, but somehow United never informed us of this when we booked our flight. Whatever, it was expensive, but not much of a problem. My pack checked in at 51 pounds and Jacqueline's was around 37. It was good to get everything in those two bags plus our carry-ons. We sat in the Vegas airport for a good amount of time playing cards. When it finally came time to board, I almost made a big mistake because I dropped my passport. It was only out of my hands for a minute, but I still almost made a very costly mistake. The quick flight from Vegas took us to San Francisco. There we had to sit around for a long time before flying out also. We were able to help a Ukranian woman find her flight to Munich with our spare time. We finally got to board the flight. This was a 14 hour flight that we got 2-3 hours of sleep on. This flight dropped us at the Sydney airport. From there, we took another flight to Melbourne. Once in Melbourne and our luggage back in our hands, we boarded a bus that took us from the airport to downtown. This is where everything got confusing. We were supposed to take a tram down to the ferry terminal. We could not find any information about this tram. So we wandered around with our huge backpacks. I threw the carry-on in mine making it push 70 pounds. We thought maybe we should get some food, but the best we could do is rest at a juice place and have some juice and water to rehydrate ourselves. Finally we found out that we were just supposed to pay on the tram and after almost getting hit by a car, we found the right tram and got on. Once on, we just rode for free until they dropped us off at the harbor where our boat would leave in the evening. This gave us a lot of time to kill, but without the ability to move very quickly with all of the weight we were carrying on our back. After a bit of wandering and discussing, we sat down at D'lish Fish and had ourselves a seafood and chips meal. We left from there and just sat in the lobby of the Spirit of Tasmania and waited for our boat. We were able to load at 6pm and finally check into our cabin. The only thing I wanted to do was sleep, but Jacqueline convinced me to go check out the boat after we both got a much needed shower. We were able to make it out just in time for sunset and have a beer. We got a good view of the city of Melbourne which was a lot larger than I thought it was originally. We were off for an eleven hour boat ride and frankly I was ready to sleep most of that. Jacqueline and I disputed that a bit as she was ready to enjoy the boat. Eventually, I won out and we both got a decent night's sleep in before awaking in Devonport, Tasmania to get sniffed by the plant sniffing dogs and pick up our rental car, the Hyundai Getz, which would be our form of transport for a couple of days in Tasmania.