The long journey to Australia

Hello,

I would like to describe our trip from Brazil to Australia: what we planned, what did not work properly, and what I would make in a different way.

Starting with a "not so good" choice

Here is something that has not went well: the flight. I say that because traveling from Brazil to Australia is already a long and tiredness trip. So you'd better do everything you can to make it as short and as comfortable as possible. I not only forgot this when I planned our trip, but I made the journey even worse then I needed to change our plans.

We did not know where in Australia we were going to live at first, but we booked our tickets do Sydney anyway because we wanted to guarantee a good price. Some things changed and we decided to live in Brisbane. The problem is: cancelling or even changing a flight ticket in Brazil is absurdly expensive, specially if you buy your tickets on decolar.com. It actually turns out that buying another ticket from Sydney to Brisbane is cheaper than cancelling the tickets we already have. As a result, we traveled from São Paulo to Sydney (with hoops in Johannesburg and Perth), and then we got another flight to Brisbane. This added some extra hours to our already long and tiredness journey.

First of all, we started by buying tickets from São Paulo to Sydney with two hoops. I would not recommend anyone to do that. Right now I am taking a look at Momondo and I can find flights from São Paulo to Sydney with only one hoop for almost the same price as the one I bought.

Our planned trip

We planned our trip as follows:

• Flight from São Paulo to Johannesburg
  Departing on Saturday (25 October) at 00.30 (local time)
  Duration: 8 hours 30 minutes
  Arriving on Saturday (25 October) at 13.00 (local time)
• Wait in Johannesburg airport for 8 hours and 30 minutes
• Flight from Johannesburg to Perth
  Departing on Sarurday (25 October) at 21.30 (local time)
  Duration: 9 hours 30 minutes
  Arriving on Sunday (26 October) at 13.00 (local time)
• Get our luggage, go through Customs and Migration services, and check-in for the next flight within 2 hours. Off course this is the part of the trip that did not work!
• Flight from Perth to Sydney
  Departing on Sunday (26 October) at 15.00 (local time)
  Duration: 4 hours 30 minutes
  Arriving on Sunday (26 October) at 19.30 (local time)
• Stay in a hotel in Sydney
  Check-in: Sunday (26 October) night
  Check-out: Monday (27 October) noon
• Flight from Sydney to Brisbane
  Departing on Monday (27 October) at 14.00 (local time)
  Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes
  Arriving on Monday (27 October) at 14.30 (local time)

If you do the calculations, you will conclude that the entire trip lasts for almost 2 days!

Our actual trip

The trip would last for almost 2 days if everything went as planned. What if our second flight delayed a few hours and we did not arrive in Perth on time to get our third flight? Well, that is exactly when happened. And even worse: as Brisbane Airport closes at night, we needed to wait until the next dawn to depart from Perth so we arrived in the next morning.

As a result, instead of relaxing for some hours in a hotel in Sydney, we spend many hours at the airport in Perth and arrived in Sydney just on time to take a shower at the hotel and rush to the next flight.

My daughter having a meal at Johannesburg International Airport - long trips are specially hard for children.

Conclusion

The first conclusion is obvious: if you can make your trip quicker, then do it. It may be little more costly but, if you take in account extra expenses with hotel, food and headaches, it may worth doing.

The second conclusion is: never buy tickets on decolar.com! Half of my troubles started when I did that. Nowadays I search for flight tickets on Momondo and it seems to be OK so far.

I have talked to some friends about long trips and some of them have a quite different idea about it. Some say that the trip will be long anyway, so we would better enjoy it. One of y friends will travel from Canada to Australia and he intend to do long stops along the way (two or more days). I have never tried to do that but, if anyone else agree with him and decide to try it, please tell me how it was.

Cheers!