On this week’s podcast, Kyle recaps a whirlwind trip that included an overwater villa in Bora Bora, driving the wild landscapes of New Zealand, scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef, and a 10-seat mezcal bar in Sydney - booked almost entirely using points and miles … including several business class flights! The guys walk through how he did it, cover some highlights and hard lessons, too. Plus, they talk about some stellar SkyMiles sales to Mexico, an update on how the ongoing government shutdown is affecting travel, and debrief from the Thrifty Traveler team’s recent retreat in Palm Springs.
On this week’s podcast, Kyle recaps a whirlwind trip that included an overwater villa in Bora Bora, driving the wild landscapes of New Zealand, scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef, and a 10-seat mezcal bar in Sydney - booked almost entirely using points and miles … including several business class flights! The guys walk through how he did it, cover some highlights and hard lessons, too. Plus, they talk about some stellar SkyMiles sales to Mexico, an update on how the ongoing government shutdown is affecting travel, and debrief from the Thrifty Traveler team’s recent retreat in Palm Springs.
Thanks to HotelSlash for sponsoring this episode of the show! Try it out today: Use promo code THRIFTYTRAVELER for a free 90-day trial – plus, get $20 off your first prepaid booking!
00:00 - Gunnar has been to all seven continents…right? Is Oceania a continent?
03:15 - Finding Something Out: A quick government shutdown update
06:05 - Something Hot: Delta SkyMiles deals to Mexico from just 7,000 roundtrip!
10:10 - Something Cold: One new Delta route we’re not thrilled about…
13:25 - A word from our sponsor: HotelSlash, the easiest way to book a cheaper hotel stay - and rebook when prices drop
14:20 - The Extra Mile: How to book a trip to Bora Bora, New Zealand, and Australia using points, just like Kyle!
18:00 - Bora Bora on points and miles (including the Conrad Bora Bora!)
31:45 - Highlights from New Zealand, including Milford Sound!
39:35 - Getting to the Great Barrier Reef for less
46:45 - Other highlights from Australia, including a ride home in Delta One Suites
59:03 - On the Spot: The latest update from TT’s coolest employee
Produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot
Yo, welcome to the show. I'm Gunnar Olson, a travel reporter and flight deal analyst at Thrifty Traveler. And with me in the studio is a man with a fresh California tan who is positively glowing this morning. It's Kyle Potter. Kyle, what's up?
You? It took you all 15 seconds to start lying on the pod. I look like I am in the middle of a Midwest win
winter right now.
No, I'm, I'm buttering you up a bit because I have a small but important question to ask you. Is Oceania a continent is another trick question? I think YY yes. So it, this is important to me because I've technically been to all seven continents, but only if French Polynesia counts as Oceania. And that's only if you count Oceania as a continent.
And according to my research, not everybody does. I think we're the wrong people to tackle
this question. I think our, our geography skills are probably pretty limited, but I would say that, oceania, including French Polynesia, and all of the islands in that area of the world are looped in as part of Australia and New Zealand as a broader continent.
So I would say that counts, but I would say just, you know, if you really wanna feel like you've been to all seven continents, you should probably get yourself to Australia or New Zealand for, for many reasons. A because they're amazing and b, 'cause you know, don't don't get it on a technicality. Yeah, exactly.
Well, yeah, I did, I did research on this. National Geographic is telling me that Australia is the principle landmass of the continent of Oceania. Most people just refer to the continent as Australia, as all of my teachers did in school. I had never heard the word Oceania until I was probably an adult.
But every country. An island on earth be belongs to some continent, which is why Greenland is technically in North America and so are, are all the islands of the Caribbean. But can you imagine being a European and going to Greenland and saying you've been to North America? I mean that, that is kind of what you're trying to do here It is, but I'll allow it.
Yeah. I mean, French Polynesia is on our side of the dateline, so that that part is like, oh man, this is just barely Oceania. But I'm counting it just because I don't wanna wait till I go to Australia to get all seven continents. So I was reading about this further and there are. Some schools of thought, even in Europe where they only count six continents.
They count North America and South America together. They teach this in European schools, apparently, according to this National Geographic article. And then there's even a five continent school of thought out there. But I, I like ours. I like the seven and I'm counting my seven
at a certain point.
Let's just call it Pangaea and say we're all done. You know, like where
does it end? Right? We are all together on this great earth. Alright, let's talk about what we're gonna talk about today. The reason I brought up Oceania is 'cause we're talking about Kyle's huge trip all over the now vast continents of Oceania, from Bora Bora to Australia and New Zealand, and you booked almost all of it with points and miles and we'll show you how.
Plus we've got one of the best sky miles flash sales we've seen in a long time down to Mexico. And we're gonna talk a little bit about the federal shutdown, start the show as well. All that, and more. Welcome back to the Th Traveler podcast.
All right, Kyle, to start the show, I'm gonna find something out. As always, we're one month into the federal government shutdown and approaching the longest shutdown in the history of the us. Are you surprised we've gotten here and I guess what, what happens now?
I'm not surprised. I mean, to be honest, I feel like, you know, we talked about this at length on the show a couple of weeks ago, and I feel like things are playing out exactly as we expected that neither side in Congress is caving, that there really to this point has been very little pressure to bring the shutdown to an end.
And, you know, while we're. Talking into these microphones right now. Fortunately there has not been like widespread chaos in air travel, but we talked a lot about some of the warning signs that that could happen as you know, staffing problems at air traffic control towers across the country start to grow and grow.
And, you know, just a few days ago, as we're talking right now, you know, we started to see staffing pauses at LAX. And this is, this is where things will start to fall apart if this continues, is it's one thing for this to happen at Burbank, a very small airport in Southern California or Nashville, a larger airport, but not one that is really critical to moving planes across the country.
But, you know, you start to see this happen in LA and New York and down in southern Florida and Chicago. I mean, we haven't gotten there yet, but this is, this is where the, the warning signs are starting to grow louder. And, and I think what we will see is. Hopefully in relatively short order as these problems continue to mount, Congress is gonna start to pay attention and make something happen to bring this to an end.
Yeah, definitely. Like you said, the impacts haven't been massive so far, but this, you know, we, we've reached a month now and we could be getting to a tipping point here where delays in cancellations start to mount because of these staffing issues. If you want more tips on how to handle those things two weeks ago we did an episode where we talked about this at length what you should do to prepare yourself for delays in cancellations and what to do if they hit you.
So yeah, go check that out. We'll put the link to that in the show notes. I
just wanna say, I really, really hope that that episode and this conversation right now is, is outdated by the time this podcast episode comes out. I would love nothing more than for all of the doubt lingering over air travel to be dispelled because Congress and the Trump administration have cut a deal.
They have reopened the government. Air traffic controllers are getting paid. TSA agents are getting paid, but right now, you know, t air traffic controllers are, are now at the point where they have gone full, basically a full pay period and a half without pay. So this is only going to continue to get worse if the shutdown drags on.
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, let's jump into something hot and something cold. A look at the good and the bad news out there for travelers. And we're gonna start with something hot. 'cause it was 40 degrees and raining during my commute in this morning, and I insist that 40 degrees and raining is the worst weather on the planet.
I can handle the cold, Kyle, 'cause you know it's coming. All right. Well the good news is someplace you don't have to worry about 40 degrees in rain is in Mexico. If you wanna fly south for a winter trip, the time to book is right now, Kyle we've been finding some of the cheapest fairest of the Caribbean islands in Mexico for this like peak winter January, February travel that we've seen in a long time.
And this last week's sky miles flash sale to Mexico really, really took the cake. I'll, let me, let me break down exactly what we found. So it was Delta sky miles rates round trip between 8,000 and 17,000 miles to Cancun, port of Vallarta and Cabo. The Cancun deal was nearly nationwide. Almost every Delta airport got in on that one with some of the lowest fares coming down to 6,800 sky miles round trip.
If you have the Delta credit card and the takeoff 15 benefit, that is a crazy deal if you break that up into one ways. But the port of I, RTA and Cabo one was a little more regional. Mostly west coast and mountain West airports, but all the fares rounded up were 9,000 sky miles round trip or less, including much smaller regional airports like Pasco, Washington and Boise, Idaho, and just some airports that probably aren't used to single digit round trip fairs.
Anywhere. Yeah. Let alone to Mexico or the Caribbean. Yeah. Pretty amazing deal. Kyle, you wanna book this one
from Pasco? No from, from Minneapolis. Sure. Yeah. You know, I'll be honest, I'm thinking about it. You know, we are in, and you, you tried to coin this, I would say with, with relative success in the middle of what you called booking season.
We're in the tail end of it really. There's just this, this pattern basically every single year. And, and it is very regional. It's not to every single destination, but we're in this weird point where people have already locked in their Thanksgiving travels and many people have already locked in their December and January flights for Christmas in the winter holidays and New Years.
And so it's just kind of this little wobble period of travel demand where airlines suddenly en mass tend to cut a lot of deals to destinations like Mexico and the Caribbean for, you know, the rest of the fall and through the winter and even into the spring, also to Europe. I mean, we've seen nothing quite on this level of single digit sky miles deals or sub $300 fares, but a lot of great deals to Europe through the rest of the winter and even into early spring.
So again, the same pattern is playing
out. Yeah. And we've seen it not just to Mexico, like you said. I think it's just to, if you wanna book a winter trip, no matter where it is, it's been the best kind of two weeks of the year to do it. We had that deal rounding up basically every nonstop flight to the Caribbean on the major US Airlines all under $400 round trip Hawaii in the three hundreds round trip we had that Puerto Rico deal with a ton of fares in the 200 round trip, which is very, very low for Puerto Rico as well.
And then even Florida and Arizona you know, just the snowbird special. A lot of those are getting really cheap right now too. So if you wanna fly over the winter, it's time to book. Especially take a look at like MLK Day weekend and President's Day weekend because a lot of these deals that we found and a lot of the stuff that I've been seeing includes travel over those weekends so long as you're not flying home on the holiday, right?
Don't, don't fly home on MLK Monday or President's Day Monday and expect to get the best deal. Fly home Tuesday. Fly home Sunday. But you can do really, really well on your winter trip if you book right now.
I am just shocked as we're sitting here talking about this, that you a, haven't tried to make booking season happen, aga happen again, and b, haven't tried to rebrand it as booksy season, which I mean, everybody listening to this, just watch our website, it's gonna happen.
Gunner's gonna get this story out again and he's gonna rebrand it and he is gonna try to make booksy a thing. Yeah, so,
I'm sorry. Booking season was one of my, one of my greatest ideas that I came up with pre podcast. I, we will, we'll have another episode about it, don't worry. Let's pivot to something cold.
Kyle. Delta Airlines announced a new route Monday, and it's not one we're really excited about. Delta said it's gonna fly from its mega hub in Atlanta to where Kyle Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia. And, you know, I just wanna be clear, this wasn't a surprise. You know, Delta has partnered with the, the yet to fly Saudi carrier Riyadh Air and sad at the time that they were going to add nonstop flights to Riyad.
So this didn't come out of nowhere, but Delta finally confirmed this week that they will in fact, fly three times a week from their hub in Atlanta to Riyadh starting next year. And I wouldn't care less.
Yeah. You know, besides the fact that I don't care about Saudi Arabia as a destination, as much money as they're putting into trying to turn themselves into a tourism center or, you know, taking on this World Cup that looks as gaudy and crazy as as a Saudi Arabian World Cup does.
The fact that Delta spent so many years griping about how Emirates and Qatar were government backed entities that were creating kind of unfair competition in the US travel market, and now all of a sudden a Saudi Arabian airline comes to play and Delta jumps in bed with them so fast. And yeah, this all seems pretty gross to me.
But I, you know, and also just really not excited about travel to Saudi Arabia doesn't, doesn't really do anything for me. We also don't know anything about Riyadh Air's network, so I don't know where they're gonna be able to fly you beyond Saudi Arabia. I'm assuming they're gonna be pretty competitive on that front, 'cause they have to be.
But this is just not something I'm, I'm excited about not gonna be on this inaugural
Yeah, this is, I mean, this is Delta trying to get in on what Riyadh Air is doing, which is trying to turn itself into the Emirates of Saudi Arabia to get people into their home hub in Saudi Arabia, to boost tourism, to diversify their economy away from just oil revenue.
And also, you know, candidly, paper over some of the horrific human rights abuses, including the murder, the state sanctioned murder of a Washington Post journalist and try to turn Saudi Arabia into a tourism destination while connecting people, including Delta passengers on this nonstop through. Riyadh to the Middle East, to India, to wherever they need to go because, you know, in addition to Delta trying to, you know, plant a flag in what they believe is an emerging tourism market you know, that is a big weakness for Delta compared to the other major airlines.
You know, American Airlines has major partners that can get you to and through the Middle East United has partnered with Emirates within the past few years and Delta just doesn't have that kind of connectivity, let alone the kind of connectivity to get to really important markets like India.
Alright.
We have a lot more and a lot more fun topics to talk about in the rest of the show, but first we're gonna take a quick break. All right. You guys know we love a good travel hack and hotel slash might be one of the best. It was built by the same team behind Auto slash, which has saved travelers millions on rental cars over the past 15 years.
Now they're doing the same for hotels. Any good examples you can think of, Kyle?
Yeah. Here's one. I found a weekend stay in Miami at a Marriott property on all the big travel booking sites. It was pricing out to around $612 for two nights, but looking through hotel slash they had the same stay for 525 bucks all in.
That's nearly 90 bucks back in my pocket. And on top of all those savings, you also earn slash cash on prepaid bookings to use toward future stays.
Yeah, you gotta get it in this yourself. Try it for free for 90 days@hotelslash.com with code thrifty traveler. That's all one word, thrifty traveler. The code also gets you $20 off your first prepaid booking hotel slash built for thrifty travelers like you and me.
All right, we're back and it's time for the extra mile where we dig a little deeper into a topic. And this week we're talking about Kyle's previous trip through French Polynesia, Australia and New Zealand that he booked almost entirely with points and miles. This trip took three destinations that are probably on a lot of people's list and strung them all together.
And I'm not quite sure how you pulled it off, so I'm excited to hear how you did it and importantly how, how much it cost. But before we go, beat by beat and nuts and bolts, this thing as. Is it ve now it's, it's back. It's back. Remind me of what a beast this trip was and, and how did this come up?
Like what started this all?
What started this is, is two things really. One, as we've talked about on the show, you know, my wife and I have a goal to hit all seven continents by the time that we turned 40. So we've got a couple of years, but we really wanted to make Australia happen. And two, my wife has had, since she was in high school, an actual physical bucket list of things she wants to do in her life.
And so in our travels, I always try to do at least one thing if possible for a, for a trip that we've been talking about. That also scratches something off her bucket list. And on that list has been snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. And so that was really the first piece of this was like, all right, this Australia has been on our list forever.
We need to get to the Great Barrier Reef, hopefully sooner rather than later. So how do we make this work? For most normal people, you probably just say like, you know what, two weeks in Australia sounds pretty good. Let's make that happen. And we decided to do what still to this day, is easily the most audacious, arguably, arguably foolish thing that I've done in travel.
Because at the end of the day, this trip involved 13 flights and 10 boat rides in 18 days. It involved seven different airline mileage programs and eight different methods of booking hotels. We stayed in easily one of the best hotels that I've ever been to, and definitely the worst that we've ever stayed in throughout the course of this trip.
It also involved my first time driving on the right side of the vehicle on the left side of the road when we were in New Zealand. So we,
we did a lot. It was a lot. So now that you've said that you probably shouldn't book this trip on your own, dear listener out there, let's walk through exactly how you did it and why.
Maybe you should. By the way, doing something a little crazy like this in travel, there's nothing to be afraid of. It's actually really fun. And this is like the ultimate, when we talk about. Putting the pieces of the puzzle together. This is, this was a true wild puzzle that you put together and that's
why we're talking about it honestly, is you, should people try to replicate this?
Probably not. I would probably caution you not to. You know, one of the big takeaways was that we probably tried to do too much. I've said that far too many times now on this podcast. One of these days I will take my own advice, but I think that there are some helpful hints and lessons either, you know, for which airline program to turn to when you're in this corner of the world or just, you know, there.
There are a lot of things that we did in the course of booking this trip that have nothing to do with points of miles and just everything to do with like the basics of saving on travel. So I hope that there's something instructive here. Even if the biggest thing is just like, that dude is nuts, don't do this again.
But it is, you know, to your point, this part is fun to me and it's fun to you and I think it is fun to a lot of our listeners, even if you don't go to this kind of extreme.
Okay,
let's nuts and bolts it then. How'd you get to Auckland? Well, before we got to Auckland, we decided to break things up and go to Bora Bora.
So, you know, the, the trip really started with, with Australia and the Great Barrier Reef as the, the ultimate goal. But then it's like, okay, how, how do we break this up on the way there? Especially because, you know, a award space for these 14 hour flights when you really want a live flat business class seat, getting to New Zealand and Australia is either incredibly expensive, no matter how many points you have, really difficult to find and can't be relied upon, or both.
So, you know, there is, there's the airline Air Tahiti Nui, which flies nonstop from a handful of US destinations to Tahiti. That became like, well, this is a good way to get pretty far. And they also fly onward to both New Zealand and Australia. So we started to think, okay, this would be a great way to, to break this up and start the trip.
And, you know, one of the things that my wife and I really like to do is have at least one stay, one destination that's really built around relaxing. And so doing that first became what we ended up doing. And so we looked at Fiji and flying Fiji Airways, but ultimately we decided to fly Air Tahiti Nui and fly to Tahiti and then onward to Bora Bora, which is just a short flight away.
And that really was built first around the hotel. You know, there is one of, if not, you know, one of the best, certainly Hilton Properties in the world, the Conrad Bora Bora, which at the time we could book for as low as 120,000 Hilton points a night. And also use free night certificates. So what we decided to do was book a four night stay and then try to make the flights work to get there.
That's amazing. Alright, so how, what class did you fly? Tell us about the redemption.
I pulled the gunner you know, we, because we needed the hotel was the hardest part to do for this part of the trip, the French Polynesia part of the trip. So once we had that booked with two nights with points and two nights with free night certificates from Hilton Cards.
I stepped back and I said, all right, let's just get something booked. And so we booked air Tahiti Nui economy from LA to Tahiti for 40,000 Alaska miles per person, which I, I had from a 75,000 point bonus on the, on the old Alaska card, and then the additional spending that was required to earn that.
So we had that mileage ready, and so we booked that. But most importantly, Alaska allows you to book free stopovers. Which means that we could just book that from LA to Tahiti and call it good. And it would've been a little bit cheaper. I think it would've been 35,000 miles per person. But you can book LA to Tahiti, stay there for a day, a couple of days a week, maybe even more, and then continue onward to either Auckland or Sydney for the same price of 40,000 that it would've cost to just fly from LA to Tahiti to Auckland.
So that became a great way to break up the trip without spending more miles. And then we said, okay, you know, it would be nice to, to fly business class, but the business class awards base on air, Tahiti Nui and from Air France. And at the time Delta was flying nonstop as well. It just wasn't there. So we just kept checking and checking and checking, and lo and behold, about.
Three, four months out from the trip actually taking off air. Tahiti knew we opened up business class award space on that flight. So we ended up rebooking it. We just rebooked the, the nonstop from LA to Tahiti for 60,000 Alaska miles in $18 a piece. I didn't have enough miles at the time, so I just, I think I spent about $350 to buy the rest of the Alaska miles that I needed in order to, to make that redemption happen.
Yeah,
well worth it. And a good example of when it makes sense to buy miles, especially when you just need to close the gap,
there are a handful of airline programs where that makes sense. Alaska is one of the most obvious ones. Alianca Life, miles and American Advantage Miles as well. Others, especially like Delta Sky Miles, that's just not worth it.
But in this case it was a no brainer.
So when you're in French Polynesia, obviously there's quite a bit of getting around there too. It's you know, not a drivable chain of violence. So tell me about your experience on Air Tahiti. Not air Tahiti Nui. Important distinction. This is the, the smaller prop plane, er, Tahiti that will connect you to the islands.
Yeah, well there was, it was definitely a little bit complicated and this is where we get to, you know, probably our worst hotel stay ever or certainly one of them is, you know, that flight on air, Tahiti Nui landed in Tahiti pretty late. I think it was like 9:00 PM and there's no way to get to Bora Bora that late at you had to go the next day.
So we just needed a hotel nearby and there are some really nice hotels on the mainland of Tahiti, the main island. They were just too expensive. It wasn't worth it. So there's the Tahiti Airport motel, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's, it's totally fine if you have that just overnight need a place to stay.
I think it was like $87. So we booked it with chase Sapphire Preferred because the Chase Sapphire Preferred has that $50 once a year hotel credit if you book through Chase Travel. So that wiped out almost all of the cost of a very mediocre but passable hotel stay that we needed. And then the next morning we bordered our flight to Boar Bora, which is about, yeah, an hour, hour and a half by prop plane.
Air Tahiti, the kind of main carrier for the nation of French Polynesia really has something close to a monopoly on flying between the islands of French Polynesia. So prices are not what you would expect to see for a one hour flight in the United States. I think it was you know, in the neighborhood of about $200, $250 each.
But my wife and I hadn't used the, the $300 travel credit on our Capital One Venture X Card, so we used that to cover more than half of our total round trip fairs from Tahiti to Poor Bora and back. That's just a, we like to tell people to use that venture X credit for like boutique hotels, but especially for airlines where, you know, they have a lot of service.
So, you know, the prospect, especially in a place like French Polynesia where the air, the weather is amazing. You don't really need to worry about disruptions and therefore booking through a third party isn't great and you're also not giving up on loyalty benefits because it's just really not a thing.
It was a great way to use that credit to defray the cost again. Yeah,
I took air Tahiti between, pep, is that, is that how you say it? Pepe? Pepe. Pepe. Yeah. Not even close. You were nodding. Close enough. Petit was like, I nailed it. Pepe. I wanted to, I wanted to embarrass you between Pepe and Moray, which is that it's a seven minute flight.
It's one of the shortest flights in the world. You can see both airports from each other. It was a very, very funny, very short flight. Also, not that cheap, but I really wanted to get over and see another island. And if you don't want the air. The Tahiti Airport Motel, the Intercontinental Tahiti, which is usually a little pricier.
It's probably like two 50 a night on a, you know, kind of off peak and much, much higher after. That is one of the best airport hotels I've ever stayed at. It was a very, very nice day. I reviewed it on our website but it's a little, a little grander than a typical airport hotel. It's got like a big pool complex and it's obviously ocean front and everything, but that place was really, really awesome.
If you wanna splurge and avoid what Kyle dubbed his worst hotel, the Tahiti Airport Motel, I don't, I don't wanna knock it too much. It's, it's fine. It is what it is. All right. So you are in Bora Bora. Can you tell us about the Conrad Bora Bora Nui?
This is I mean, it's definitely one of the nicest hotels I've ever stayed at in properties.
It's breathtakingly gorgeous. It's basically, you know, the, the iconic photos of the Maldives in French Polynesia. So Overwater Villas slung over long, seemingly never ending deck walks. The grounds are gorgeous. You can take a hike up the hill where there's villa after villa, and then you just get this kind of breakaway scene where you get to see Mount O Manu, which is the main mountain on the main island of Bora Bora.
The Conrad Bora Bora is positioned further away. This is my wife's single favorite hotel in the world. She begs me to go back, so I think we're gonna have to go back. Like I said, you know, we booked for 120,000 Hilton Honors points a night. It now costs 200,000 Hilton Honors points a night after some of the devaluations that we've seen from Hilton over the last year.
So it's gonna be tough to swallow that one. But yeah, it was, it was amazing. We, the. We got upgraded our first two nights to kind of one of the, the main rooms, which is on the land but is bigger. It's a pool villa. And that was honestly incredible. Very spacious. Great. But then the final two nights we got upgraded to an Overwater villa, which was amazing.
There's, there's really nothing like it, and I was really glad to have that experience while we were in French Polynesia and kind of scratch the itch that I feel like a lot of people, at least myself think about with the Maldives.
Yeah. That's pretty amazing. It sounds and looks like a pretty exceptional resort.
What, what do you mean? What else did you do there? What other kind of. Resort credits and things. Did you do to take some of the sting off? Yeah,
a couple of things on property and off. The, the breakfast at the Conrad Bora Bora Nui is amazing, absolutely amazing. One of the best hotel breakfasts ever, including just tons of French pastries.
And it costs, like, it's amazing because the rack, right, for breakfast at the time we were there was $52 a person. And so because we have the Hilton Aspire card, those also would work with the Hilton Surpass card. Even the Hilton Gold status that you get from the Amex Platinum card, you get Hilton Gold status, which makes that breakfast free, or at least they give you the option to select free breakfast among several other options for your status.
So that was amazing. As I mentioned, we have the Hilton Aspire card which has $400 in resort credits 200 twice a year. And because the Conrad Bora Bora isn't located on the mainland, the main island of Bora Bora, you have to, as soon as you land in Bora Bora, get on a boat, and of course you have to pay for that boat to get to the resort.
And it cost at, at least at the time a hundred, about $130 a piece. And so we used our resort credits to pay for that, which meant, you know, we paid for most of that transfer before we got there. And then we used the next resort credit when we were actually at the resort to cover the pretty obscenely expensive costs of, of eating and drinking on a you know on an island paradise.
It's it's a pricey place to stay and eat, I'll tell you that. But it's well, well worth it. Then the last thing we did, the highlight maybe of the entire trip certainly of of French Polynesia, is we found this this place on the main island called LaPage Bora Bora, which allows you to rent a boat, either a pontoon or just like a little, I dunno, a little single engine boat, regardless of whether you have a boating license and just go around the bays of Bora Bora by yourself.
So we did this for like four hours you know, chased around stingrays in the crystal clear waters, stopped at a grocery store beforehand and got some, you know, baguettes and cheese and ham, and had the most amazing lunch of my lifetime in the shadow of Mount Tou sitting on a sandbar. It was, it was everything that you, that I want from this and to book that we booked through Viader.
The Tour and excursion company paid on a Capital One card and then went back and erased the cost with Capital One miles. It's my, maybe my single favorite use of Capital one miles to date.
Damn,
that was incredible. What a description of that day on the boat with your I clearly, I don't think about it at all.
You know, we're, we're now like a year and a half since I took this trip and I, it's still like completely ingrained in my mind.
Okay. So final, final follow up on Bora Bora. Now that it's, the Conrad is now 200,000 Hilton points a night. Still worth it. What's your bottom line review?
I think so. I, I think if only because that seems to be the going rate for these kinds of properties, not just for Hilton, but for, you know, really all of the major hotel chains and I think this is just.
Unfortunately, the price you pay now. So combine that with the fact that at least as we're talking right now, you can still use free night certificates, even if it costs 200,000 points per night. As long as there's a standard room, the lowest price award that that property offers available, you can still use those free night certificates.
So I, you know, would I go there for one night? No. I think you, you gotta be able to, you know, at the very least, earn a bunch of Hilton points, save them up for this, or transfer a bunch of American Express points to Hilton in order as a book. You know, I would say hopefully a, a four, if not five nights stay, especially because with Hilton, the fifth night is free so long as you have status.
Nice.
Okay. Let's make our way down to Auckland then. Tell us about how you got there from French Polynesia.
Yeah. You know, like I mentioned, when we originally booked, we had that free stop over in Tahiti, which meant that the, the onward flight to Auckland was included in the original price we paid. But when we bumped ourselves up to business class, we lost that.
But I found that American Airlines is absurdly cheap for using miles to fly from Tahiti to to Auckland again with Air Tahiti Nui. It was just 30,000 miles in business class for like a seven hour flight. And, you know, air Tahiti Nui both on the segment from LA to Tahiti and then again from Tahiti to Auckland was really great.
You know, it's, it's got older business class seats. It doesn't have direct aisle access, but that is just fine for these mostly daytime flights where you're, it's not a ton of people that are traveling solo. A lot of people are traveling with their loved ones or their spouses like I was. So, you know, those business class seats in 2, 2, 2 configuration, they lie flat are totally fine.
It was a great flight. The service was incredible. It was, you know, every bit as Polynesian as you would hope for.
Awesome. Okay, so you land in Auckland, where to next? Immediately down to
Queenstown on the south island. This is where it started to feel like maybe we were trying to do too much because making that connection from the international terminal at Auckland to the domestic terminal.
I think we have 35 minutes. Because of a delay. And there's a good at least three quarter of a mile, if not a mile walk between those terminals after clearing immigration in New Zealand. So it was a little bit harrowing there for a bit. But we made it on a cheap flight from Air New Zealand down to Queenstown on the south island and set out to, you know, cover what we wanted to cover down there.
Awesome. Where did you stay in Queenstown?
The first, so we spent two nights total in, in Queenstown the first night. We stayed at the hotel St. Maritz's of Queenstown, which is kind of on the south end of the downtown. Really great property. Relatively affordable, but I had you know, we have the, we both have the Delta Gold Sky Miles card, which now has a a hundred dollars hotel credit to book through Delta stays each year.
So this is how we booked, you know, I think it was $196 for a one night stay at this hotel. So we covered more than half of it with this Delta stays credit and then set off the next
morning for the Milford sound. Ugh, the Milford sound. One of the things that is on my, I don't have a physical written bucket list, like your wife, but that's on the list for sure.
Tell me about that. Tell me about the whole excursion. Well, you tell me why it's on your list. It just looks like. It's what I think of when I think of New Zealand, like just the kind of fjord like mountains rising right out of the water and just my in-laws went last year as well and they said it was just mind blowing.
And it just, from what I've heard, if you want, you know, just as far as the sites you need to see in that part of the world, that's it
with a bullet. It is every bit as jaw dropping as you hope, I think. And so we, we rented a car through auto slash because I think it was, I mean, at least $80 cheaper than going directly through any of the big box rental car chains.
And as I said at the top of this segment, this is my first time driving on the right side of the road. And it took all of about five minutes after pulling out of the airport lot for my wife to say, you are about to sideswipe that car and. It was uncomfortable for about 10 minutes and then eventually it becomes pretty natural.
And I just wanna impress upon everyone who is looking to do this kind of a trip in New Zealand, especially on the South Island, is, I don't know that it would have been the same trip had we not had a car because the experience of driving where we wanted to go and stopping where we wanted to stop versus being on a tour bus or taking a plane, which is another popular thing to do, to fly from Queenstown out to the Milford sound.
Seeing New Zealand from the road was really, really special. Driving into the Milford sound was close to as impressive as actually being out on the boat there. So, you know, it took, took a little bit to get comfortable with it. I still will admit I will, when I'm driving on the right side of the car, flip the the blinker instead of the the window washers and vice versa.
You get used to it pretty quickly, and it, it was a really, really special experience to drive out to the Milford Sound Hop on a cruise boat and tool around the bay for a good two hours, which is, yeah, you, you captured it. It's beautiful. It's otherworldly, it's incredible that places like this exist in the world and not just on movie screens.
Yeah, it does look exactly like you've described and you you sent us all some photos and videos from when you were out there, and hopefully we can share those with y'all as well. Okay. So after Milford sound, what's next?
Yeah, we, we spent a night in tetano, which is the largest city that's close to the Millford sound.
It's probably an hour, hour and a half drive away, and we just needed a night there. Had an Airbnb gift card from a previous Christmas of a hundred dollars and booked, kind of a tent, hostile type stay in the, the small town of Nu for a hundred dollars and 74 cents. So I charged 74 cents to a credit card for that Airbnb stay before we made our way back to Queenstown the next day, and stayed at the DoubleTree Queenstown, which importantly is much closer to the airport pretty far away from Queenstown itself.
So if you're really looking to explore Queenstown, I'm not sure I would recommend it, with the exception of the fact that they have a water taxi that runs directly into downtown Queenstown. So it's really not the worst as long as you kind of build in that extra time and cost to, to get to downtown Queenstown.
Importantly, super close to the airport. More importantly, you know, the, the going rate for, for that property was typically around 40,000 Hilton Honors points. But for some reason I just kept checking after I booked. I don't really know why I did this. But one day I looked at the exact date that we needed and it was 19,000 Hilton Honors points.
So I re-booked it for less than half of what we originally paid.
Check all your bookings as often as you can at least once a month. That's one of my great travel rules. Okay, so back to Auckland. You go, I assume
back up to Auckland on a Jetstar, a low cost carrier that flies throughout that whole corner of the globe and as well as Southeast Asia.
Totally fine. Well worth the savings. I think it was less than $60 a person to fly from Queenstown back up to Auckland and just one night in Auckland. Again, I cannot express how chaotic this trip started to feel at times, but we got there with, with good enough time to check in at the Park Hyatt Auckland, which is.
An amazing city hotel, amazing location, probably right where you wanna be in Auckland, which I can say confidently given my 18 hour stay in the city of Auckland. Well, we're at the 20,000 Hilton or Hyatt points that we used to book it, but then we immediately went out on a ferry to y Hecka Island which is an island just just off the coast of Auckland that's really well known for wineries out there.
And we had a great day exploring, exploring the island and sipping our way across.
Okay, so 18 hours in Auckland and then you head on over to Sydney, off to Sydney, bright and
early the very next morning. You know, we, we, there was, there was a weird quirk with there not being economy award space and flight prices were pretty expensive for the date that we needed because we really needed to start our way to Australia that next day.
So we wound up booking Qantas business class from Auckland to Sydney, which the plus of that was we got lounge access and a good breakfast in the lounge before boarding the flight. And I checked American, I checked every one World Airline program to find the best rate and the best rate for flying business class from Auckland to Sydney was British Airways for 22,000 avios and about $60 a piece.
Not bad. Not
bad. Was that a
live flat seat?
No, it was just a, like a domestic recliner. Seven domestic recliner. But it did have maybe the best flight attendant I've ever had in my life who came through during boarding and offered us a glass of champagne. And then came back and said, I've got two more glasses here and I don't want to dump 'em.
You need to have these. It's time to party. Those were close to verbatim his words. It was really, really fun. This, this guy was great. I wish I remembered his
name. A super fun flight attendant. Makes all the difference. Okay, so you're finally in Australia. What's next up to the Great
Barrier Reef? There are a handful of different cities that you can get to in order to kind of treat as the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef.
Probably the, the most common one is Cairn, but we wanted to go based on you know, our, our colleague John's recommendation go to Hamilton Island, a small island really kind of directly in the Great Barrier Reef, which means you don't need to spend all day on a boat getting out to go snorkeling and scuba diving.
Again, flight prices were absurdly high for the specific dates that, that we needed. And so I fanned out there's one airline that flies, so it's not this is not a, a quirk, this is on purpose that prices were really high. Virgin Australia fly flew that day from Sydney to Hamilton Island, and rather than paying, you know, I think it was $350 a piece for a one-way flight again, fanned out, searched every single partner that I could find to see how I could book this flight for the, the fewest amount of points as possible, and found that we could book this for 12,000 Singapore Airlines, Chris flyer miles and $48 in taxes and fees.
That's an unbelievable
deal. Like that's why we flex so hard about these partners and why you need to book these partners and search for all of them, and at least do yourself the service of, of checking it out because that is, I mean, 12,000 points and $48 to save. $300 on a flight is, is pretty amazing.
It's what it's all about.
And, you know, not just the partners, but having the flexible points that you can transfer in order to take advantage of this stuff. Yeah, I mean this is why we harp on the importance of earning Capital One miles and Amex membership rewards points and chase ultimate rewards and not just swiping your Delta or your United Card everywhere you go because, you know, I can tell you it would've cost me an arm and a leg to, to book this flight through another carrier.
Yeah.
Okay. So you land at the Great Barrier Reef, how many nights? Three nights. It felt like, oh wow.
It was the second longest stay of our tide for second longest stay of our trip. So it felt great to be in one place for more than 18 hours. And Hamilton Island is, is a weird place. I will tell you that.
I really enjoyed it. The island is basically just everything on the island is owned and run by the island. Every grocery store, every restaurant, it's all owned by the same corporation that manages the island, so it feels a little strange. But there is a, there are a couple of hotels. There's also a very large apartment building that was charging, you know, in the neighborhood of $800 for a three night stay which didn't seem terrible for our stay.
It was a, it was a nice enough apartment, had two bedrooms. We only needed one, obviously. But heading into this trip, there was this incredible promotion from Capital One shopping, which is a shopping portal. Not to earn points, but to earn cash back. And then you can turn that cash back into rewards. And the promotion was that new users who met a specific spending threshold after signing up could earn $200 in cash back.
So $200 goes a long way towards an $800 hotel stay because you could turn that cash back into host hotels.com rewards or hotels.com gift card. But you can do this with your spouse too. So I got a referral to sign up for this, got $200 in rewards, and then I referred my wife. I got a referral back from that for my wife signing up.
My wife got $200. Now, nowadays it's typically in the neighborhood of 50 or 75, but this is just like, when you see this stuff, you gotta move fast and figure out how to maximize this. So at the end of the day, I think we ended up putting you know, getting more than $500 in hotels.com gift cards and putting that towards you know, this stay the, you know, it made, it made the cost of this less than $300 total for three nights.
That'll do the trick. Tell me about the reef itself. How did you get out to explore it and, and take this one off your wife's bucket list.
This was, you know, I said before, we always try to do one thing that's really about relaxing and then we always try to do at least one thing or one thing, preferably on each trip that's a splurge.
And this was the splurge. There really wasn't a great way to save. We did a ton of research trying to find a tour operator to get us on a boat out to the Great Barrier Reef and, and do some snorkeling, and it was worth every penny. It was great. We got there, we did a lot of snorkeling. Saw the reef, saw as many fish as you could hope to see.
And then they, they also offered a guided scuba excursion where, you know, we, we are not scuba certified, nor do we really have much interest in it, but it's like, we're here, let's do some scuba. So as long as you stick with a guide, you can, you can pay more. I think it was about a hundred dollars a person for like a 15 minute guided scuba excursion to go down deeper into the reefs and see more.
And it was, it was really, really special.
Oh, that's so cool. That's, so anything that you saw down there that you've, you've been so good with your words today. You've been good at describing things. Any beautiful, anything under the water that you can describe for us? Hises are really cool. Hises are so cool, man.
All right. Back to Sydney.
You go then. Yep. So after three nights on Hamilton Island exploring, the Great Barrier Reef. We also took a day trip out to Whitehaven Beach, which is one of, one of the most beautiful beaches. Not just in that corner of the globe, but really anywhere in the world. So I would highly recommend that as well.
We, again, booked that one through Viader and paid for it with Capital One miles after that, after that purchase cleared. And then eventually you know, took a cheap, cheaper flight on Virgin Australia on the day we needed to depart. So just booked that with cash back down to Sydney and made our way to the Hyatt Regency Sydney.
Maybe the most popular, certainly one of the most popular Hyatt Properties on the planet is the park Hyatt, Sydney. It has a view of the Sydney Opera House. It's in an amazing location. I, I wanted to want to do that bad enough, but it costs 45,000 points per night and I just couldn't justify it when the Hyatt region c Sydney was 15,000 points a night, which was important for two reasons.
One, we could book two nights for 30,000 points total. Maybe more importantly, I had a Hyatt brand Explorer Award, which Hyatt has this goofy, I would say still relatively little known program where if you stay at five Hyatt brands. Hyatt, Regency Park, Hyatt, Allah, et cetera. Stay of five of them separately and you get a free night that is valid for a property that costs up to 50, 15,000 points.
A category four Hyatt property is the cutoff. This fell under that. So that allowed us to get the third night using that park that, that I had earned just a couple of months prior. So it was a, a really great way to use a combination of points and this goofy brand explorer perk from Hyatt to to book our stay there.
One of the best values in travel is booking a Hyatt Regency in a city where a Park Hyatt exists. 'cause they're always so well priced, really competitively priced. Tokyo's another great example of that. They're usually a little, sometimes those Hyatt Regencies can be a little lackluster, but man, are they cheap.
When you book with Hyatt points in towns there where there is a Park Hyatt as well. I
wouldn't knock this Hyatt Regency though. It was really nice. It had been redone within at least the last two years. So the rooms were, were very nice and modern. The location was pretty great. It was, you know, there was a tram line really close to the hotel to get basically anywhere we needed to go.
So yeah, I wouldn't feel like, you know, for people who are weighing the same thing that I was, I wouldn't feel like you're slumming it at the Hyatt Regency. I think it's a very nice hotel.
That's good. Alright. Did you get up to anything in your short time in Sydney?
We took a day trip on a ferry. I think at this point we're on our ninth boat ride out to Manley Beach which is just kind of north of the bay of kind of the main area where the Park Hyatt is.
We did visit the Park Hyatt for a cocktail, which the, the cocktail was amazing. I also felt a sense of pure vindication that the day we were there and the day after, a massive cruise boat was docked right in front of the park. Hyatt blocking, no, the Sydney Opera House. So I would've been. I would've been out of sorts had we paid all of those points for the Park, Hyatt, Sydney, only to have that view, the view that you're paying for be blocked by a princess cruise or something.
So yeah, we did that. We did, we did Bondy Beach. We did, we did kind of everything I, I think you're supposed to do, including our last night we went to this amazing restaurant that I have to recommend called Azi, which is the Italian word for children. It's an Italian restaurant with awesome, fresh made pasta and a great wine list.
And then as we were walking home to our hotel is our final night in Sydney, I looked down the alleyway and I'm like, is that a bar? It is a bar. That's the smallest bar I've ever seen. Let's go check it out. It is this place called Cantina. Okay. And it is a missed call bar. So we stayed there for a couple of drinks, chatted to just the most demented in a good way, pair of guys from New Zealand, and then chatted up the bartenders who told us that in order to source Thermos call, they bring it by hand in empty two liter plastic bottles from Mexico.
And that one of their newest hires got stopped and had to dump out all of their product at Customs and Immigration in Australia on the way back. So I don't think that guy's working there anymore. It was. One of my favorite bars in the world. It, it is, it probably is my favorite bar in the world. It was so cool.
The cocktails were amazing, but the vibe, it's like in this old converted single stall garage. It's amazing.
That's awesome. I wonder what their routing from mezcal areas of Mexico to Sydney was. But I think you actually probably know that routing pretty well. 'cause this is exactly how you got home, right?
I don't think
that they flew. How, how? I did. Well, we'll see. I should I'll have to go back and ask. So I wanna preface this with, this deal does not exist anymore, but I think the lesson here is gather ye rosebuds while you may, you gotta take advantage of these things, especially when it's too good to be true.
Or seems too good to be true because it turns out it was too good to be true for too long. So Delta is notorious for charging 400, 500, 600,000 miles for a business class seat, especially on these ultra long hauls like it's LA to Sydney Flight and you know, Atlanta to Cape Town. But there was, at the time that we booked, and for not too much longer after that, a way to book that for 95,000 sky miles per person.
And the way that you did that was either originate or depart or originate or return to anywhere in central America or South America rather than the United States or Canada. So, you know, if you search from Minneapolis to LA to Sydney, or just LA to Sydney, you would see 400,000 sky miles. But if you search from Mexico, ci Mexico City to LA to Sydney, it was 95,000 sky miles.
So we decided to use that to get home and flew home through Mexico City. I had a bonus from a Delta Reserve card more than a year prior that I just hadn't used. So I had basically a hundred, I think I had 105,000 sky miles in my account. My wife, just through her work travels, had somewhere in the neighborhood of 80,000.
So we transferred another 15,000 American Express American Express cards from our del, from our Amex Gold card to her Delta account, and booked two tickets separately flying from Sydney to LA to Mexico City. Wow.
That's a pretty great way to get home as well. And Delta one an amazing redemption that, like you said, doesn't exist anymore.
Does it not exist because of you? Did you, did you put the nail in the coffin on this one? No comment. All right. So you've made it around Oceania and you're back in home in North America. Looking back on this trip, what did you get? Right? Hmm.
I think. I, I wanna really say again that getting a car in New Zealand was maybe the best decision that we made.
I, you know, I've talked on the show a couple of times about how I've really come around on that, and that was probably the start. I don't think our experience in New Zealand would have been anywhere near as special had we not had a car to, you know, make the most of the limited time that we had on the South Island.
So that was really important, I think, you know, starting what became a pretty. Fun-filled, borderline chaotic trip with four nights in, in Bora Bora. Was was the right way to break up that journey across the Pacific and to, you know, make it work to redeem miles for the flights that we needed. I mean, you, you can, you know, we have seen enough business class award space to New Zealand, to Australia over the course of the last year and a half, let's say, to, to make that happen, to do it in a straight shot.
But if you, you know, you wanna break it up or you're just not seeing, you know, the opportunity to get there in one shot, this is a good way to do it either through you know, either through Tahiti and French Polynesia or through Fiji. Both are great options and both have some really great redemptions using either Alaska miles or American miles or both.
Anything else? You think
you did really well? I think back to after we got back from this trip, I was at a friend's house for, for a party and. His, his dad was talking to me about this trip and he, he just goes, how, so how much did this cost you? I don't like to like tally things up and say like, oh, well I got 20, 20 cents per point for my miles 'cause that's not the point.
So I sat there and I was trying to do some mental inventory and he's like, oh God, you're gonna tell me this was less than $8,000 total? And I was like, it was probably less than two. And he's just like, what? But, but that wouldn't have been possible just with points and miles. I think maybe the best thing is, you know, this is a puzzle.
Finding all the, the award availability to do this stuff is really difficult. But in order to take things to the next level, you really do kind of need a no stone unturned mentality to think about those other benefits that you may have that aren't points. You can use to do special things, whether that's using, you know, capital One miles to cover the cost of a fun experience that you might otherwise not take, or, you know, a hotels.com gift card and taking advantage of a promotion or, you know, in this case, we had another night in Tahiti on our way before we went to Auckland and we needed another hotel.
And I remembered that, you know, hotels.com did away with its stay 10 nights, get one free promotion, but I still had that reward from my previous 10 stays. So I used that to book, you know, a, a pretty nice boutique hotel in downtown Pepe for like $10 total. Having that kind of mentality of really doing inventory and thinking about the additional ways that you can save, I think this trip was, was really, really good for that.
Yeah, man,
it sounds like it all right enough with the positivity. What, what went wrong? What would you do differently? What can people learn from you out there? You are not as polished and tanned and perfect as, as you may seem. I am certainly
not. No, I, I'd say it's a common theme in all the trips that we've talked about of mine recently, is I need to start taking my own advice and trying to squeeze in less, I don't know how to do that, because I'm really glad that we did what we did.
The trip wouldn't have been the same without going to Bora Bora. It wouldn't have been the same without, you know, spending time in the South island of New Zealand. I wouldn't have felt like we had actually been to New Zealand had we not gone down to Queenstown and taken that drive. Had we just stayed in Auckland.
I, I don't know that it would've been the same experience. And the same goes for, you know, both Sydney and the Great Barrier Reef. The real reason why we did this. So, on the one hand, I think. I need to slow down and try to be a little bit more intentional about building in enough time, not just to do things for the sake of doing them, but for truly enjoying them and learning a place.
But at the same time, it's kinda like, I think I'd probably do it the same way over again. Maybe. Maybe just find one thing to cut out in this case.
Yeah. Well that's an amazing trip. I hope that people out there who are. Trying something maybe a little less adventurous, but with some of the same beats can pull something off because I think you gave a lot of really actionable advice and maybe people who are looking to travel to that side of the world don't necessarily know what kind of points and miles you need.
And I think the short answer is flexible points and miles and to cast a wide net. So you did a, a pretty amazing job on this trip and we were all really excited to see it. Hopefully if you still have that, that great circle mapper you did of all of the flights that you took, we can maybe share that in the show as well, because that is a really funny image of just how vast and how much travel.
This what about two week trip was in, in total it was two and
a
half
weeks. 13 flights and then, yeah, 10 boat rides. Not to mention all the time in the car in New Zealand. It was a lot, but the more, the more we've been talking about it, I would do it over again in the heartbeat.
Okay. To close the show as always we have on the spot and it's my turn to put you on the spot.
You ready? Let's do this. Okay, so last week we were in Palm Springs with all of our coworkers for the Thrifty Traveler Retreat, a very, very fun time. What's one thing you learned about a coworker or some coworkers on last week's retreat? I told everyone,
and I told you on last week's pot, that I was most excited to peel back another layer of the Peter Thornton Onion.
And my God, did Peter Thornton deliver the highlight of the, of maybe the entire trip of Palm Springs is great, don't get me wrong, but talking to Peter around the fire last night about how he took a road trip from Panama back home to Minnesota via Edmonton, going to something called the Somersault Festival in Calgary, which I'm still not sure.
Is that a music festival or does that, is that gymnastics involved? I don't, I don't know that we can say for sure. I, I don't, I don't wanna do the research to know the answer is out there. I just prefer having my own vision of that. And you know, him mentioning that on one of these trips. They, they were accompanied by a 15-year-old with a briefcase named Greg, who quote, Greg is also the kid who took over my lawn mowing business.
Cut rate cutting, which had the slogan, great lawn for not a lot of green.
You forgot the fact that he's been to Calgary three times and has never been to Banff. He just will drive all the way to Calgary. He's, it's not like Calgary's a short way from where he lived in Minnesota. You drive all the way to Calgary and then you don't make the hour and a half drive to one of the most beautiful places on the planet.
Listen, when you got somersaults to do, you know you gotta make some choices. And apparently Banff just kept hitting the cut list.
Peter, you are the absolute best, our best traveler, always in forever. Thank you for a good story. Time around the fire as usual. All right. Thank you so much for listening to the Thrifty Traveler Podcast this week.
Rate us five stars on your podcast platform of choice and like, and subscribe to the show on YouTube. If you know someone who's going to Oceania French Polynesia, Australia, New Zealand anywhere, send this episode to them because they need a vacation. They need to book it with points in miles. If you have any feedback for us, send me a note at podcast@thriftytraveler.com.
I'd love to hear from you there too, including if you think that I actually have seven continents or not. Is French Polynesia count to my seven continents? That's all for me. Kyle, tell us about the team. This episode was
produced by your favorite host who is or is not wearing Lululemon this week.
Is is. I've just, it is a given at this point Anyway. His name is Gunnar Olson. It was produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas. Our theme music is by Benjamin Tissot. See you next week. See ya.