The BNA Gentleman

Has anyone embarked on a tour of the Oceania countries? Is flight hopping the best option to try to hit as many countries out there? I like doing 2-3 days touring of each country and I'm trying to eventually hit every country in the world.

This region has always alluded me and I was wondering if anyone knows of the best way to get around these areas to try to visit multiple countries.

Kiwi Flyer

The South Pacific is difficult for country hopping as many neighbouring countries have no regular air or water transport connections between them, so a lot of back-tracking may be required. Fiji or NZ are useful hubs to visit many of the countries, but not all; Australia to a lesser extent.

Some countries are particularly difficult to visit - eg Tokelau only has a weekly freighter from Samoa (no air links), Niue only has a once a week flight from NZ.

ryanbryan

It's also worth mentioning that fares in that part of the world are particularly expensive due to a lot of them being monopoly routes and/or only operating a couple of times a week. It can also be hard to pre-plan any more than a few months in advance, as particularly to some of the less common islands, schedules can frequently change.

Hubbing at Fiji could get you to a fair few but the exercise will be far from cheap. Perhaps if you have a couple that you are particularly interested in that you want to mention, we might be able to provide some better advice.

JClasstraveller

This is going to be very wrong on FT, but the option that stands out to me is taking a cruise

cavemanzk

Fares from Auckland are reasonable on routes operated by NZ, as they are pretty main stream.

AKL-NLK
AKL-NOU
AKL-NAN
AKL-TBU
AKL-APW
AKL-IUE
AKL-RAR
AKL-PPT
AKL-VLI

All of the above have 2x or more services an week from NZ, the likes of NAN,TBU,APW,RAR have at least an daily service and some days two.

ryanbryan

There is also another "Island Hopper" in the South/Central Pacific, namely BNE-INU-MAJ-TRW-INU-NAN v.v. on Nauru Airlines, but not sure how the ticketing works as you can't ticket through all the way.

Kiwi Flyer

That airline is not reliable. You need to be very flexible on dates and routing, and should only book close to date of travel.

rankourabu

There are lots of "country collectors" who have dont this, spending a couple hours to a day in each place to tick it off a list, check the trip reports forum, you ll find it.

ryanbryan

I know, I have been on them many times, but they are not actually as unreliable as people think. Thought it was worth a mention though, as many are not aware of it.

ypqRD

The individual places have their own airlines, and generally cover one island over, so you can make an itinerary as long as you're patient and willing to search on the little airline websites - overall search engines don't seem to index these airlines. Also, many times the flights are once or twice a week, so try a lot of dates to see the pattern.

For example, start in Australia and take AirCalin to New Caledonia. From there AirCalin again to Vanuatu. Fiji Airways to Fiji, and then later to Samoa. Here you run into trouble and have to pop down to Auckland, from where you can carry on to the Cook Islands. Air Raratonga will take you from there to Tahiti, and LAN will (once a week) take you to Easter Island, from where they have daily flights to Chile.

With some sort of backbone in place you can then look for spikes out from individual islands, such as a day trip to American Samoa from Samoa, that sort of thing.

UAPremExecflyer

I trust you are alluding to the fact that you would like to travel more to the South Pacific and beyond? So far it seems this goal has eluded you.

Nugget_Oz

Even cruising won't get you to the smaller islands that don't have frequent air service.

The best way, admittedly probably not the most convenient, is learn how to sail and take off a month or two and sail around the South Pacific.

LHR/MEL/Europe FF

i would also suggest a cruise. Plenty of them leaving and will take in 3, 4 or 5 places. Probably more relaxed way of doing it.

Mwenenzi

None of the pacific islanda are that close to NZ CG map