Oceania (Australia, New Zealand & the South Pacific) - One month in June, 2013: Three countries in Oceania?

Hi all,

I'm always striving to visit new countries from the USA, often using frequent flyer miles for the expensive long-haul flights.

Two years ago, during my first venture into the area, I visited Fiji (1 week), Vanuatu (5 days) and Australia (3 weeks).

We did lots of diving (Fiji) and hiking (Vanuatu and Australia). We're also very interested in birdwatching and wildlife viewing.

I'm trying to cobble together a month-long itinerary that'll take me to three new countries, but it's proving to be somewhat difficult, since direct flights between them seem non-existent.

The best I've been able to come up with, thus far is something like:

Tonga (~5 days)
Samoa (~5 days) via Nadi
New Zealand (~ 3 weeks)

This isn't ideal for me, since I'd really like to visit Tonga when the humpback whales are there, but I don't have the time to do so. Are there other, more interesting countries, that we should consider instead?

It depends on which FF plans you can use, and how expensive a trip. Stellar experiences are Easter Island (IPC) but it is hard to reach via FF awards (LAN flies SCL-IPC-PPT, so you can combine it with Tahiti easily). I've been to American Samoa and was not impressed, maybe the other Samoa is better. Lord Howe Island is the other stellar experience, mostly because it is capacity controlled making it lightly touristed. You might also like the Philippines once you get out of MNL. But as you note flying between islands is often difficult and generally requires using both Star and Oneworld, or even non-alliance airlines, so probably multiple awards -- with tough availability if you don't have a lot of date flexibility.