Given the pay cut I took with my new job (>50%) and that Hubby won’t be working, I think our cruise-style is about to become a lot more….modest. I’ve been looking at Celebrity cruises again. We had some pretty good times with them back in the day. We’re also going to be doing a lot of self-guided land tours in NZ and Australia. Fiji is tops too for Christmas break maybe. Don’t know. I only have Christmas break to play with this year, as I need to build up leave. Sadly, the huge cache of leave I had at my old job doesn’t transfer.

Don’t blame you at all for not wanting to go anywhere near the US. I’ve been hearing of tourists being detained for no good reason and then having a hell of a time getting back to their home countries, plus there’s the ridic visa fees. When I went to Turkmenistan in 2024 as part of the 5 Stans trip, I had a preview of what life in the the States is now. It was sobering. And terrifying. It’s not an exact analogy, but it’s close enough to not want a repeat experience for myself, let alone anyone else. I’m avoiding my home country too, which is sad.

There are definitely some smaller New Zealand cruise lines and you should be able to easily get down to Antarctica from where you are now so that’s a bonus. That whole Pacific islands area really opens up too. Loads of great opportunities there and hopefully you’ll get to experience most of them. Regardless, I doubt you’ll run out of things to see in New Zealand itself; it does look a spectacularly beautiful country.

Looking forward to the Caribbean, and really glad that we’re round-tripping from Puerto Rico rather than Florida. The US is not a very welcoming place for anyone these days, foreign or not. We’re limiting our exposure to the country to transiting through airports only for the foreseeable future and are foregoing any tourism there. After our May 2026 cruise we don’t intend to even transit the airports and will be avoiding the country completely for any more travels if we can.

An Asia cruise of some sort is our plan for 2028 since our honeymoon was out there in 2008 and we went back in 2018. I would say that we’ll keep you informed in case our plans align at any point but I think that though we both like cruising, our ideas of what makes a decent cruise (and a budget that fits it) are somewhat at odds. You never know, though. We’re ever hopeful of that lottery win.

Anyway, we plan to spend ~4 years or so here touring around, and then I’ll finally retire and we can hop to our next spot.