Nice to hear from all of you. I'm on a wireless internet that's about as fast as sending smoke signals to Dallas. This is the one & only site working reasonably well.

The bag was found and arrived at June's in Auckland around 7 pm last night. I am so grateful she's got it. Yes!!!

I did move our flights to and from Sydney yesterday to allow 2 extra hours to make the flights on both ends. The new security measures are still front page news in the papers this morning. I've had enough of racing through airports today (and thanks for the tip, gil. we did take the staten island to the belt parkway route - still an unreported traffic mess)

Yesterday was terrific. The New Zealand people we've met are unfailingly friendly and ever so willing to strike up a conversation. Our driver to the train station gave us a wonderful overview as to the highlights of our three day tour. The line for the train check in was long, but handled extremely efficiently. We wound up sitting with a family of five from England. They were on their trip of a lifetime, spending 5 weeks touring in New Zealand. Lots of photos were snapped when folks were boarding, so they were commenting on how much they enjoyed being background material for people's trip photos. They moved on to convincing the older daughter the proper word in New Zealand for a single sheep was "shep". You had to be there .. it was really funny.

The scenery is not only dramatic, but changeable. One starts in the plains grasslands, rises up into the alpine area, heads down a huge (13 mile) steep tunnel (that's for the roller coaster fans on the trip), enters subtropical rainforest, and finishes at one of the larger cities on the west coast, Greymouth.

One of our nagging questions was answered: why isn't the ship stopping up here, closer to the glaciers? turns out there is no deep water dock or suitable facilties for the ship to weigh anchor. It was a calm day, yet lots of swells in the ocean.

We were promptly dispatched to our hotel in town. Umm .. why are we driving out of town? where are we? 20 minutes later, we arrive at our home for the evening. Oops - we're about 6 miles out of town with nary a restaurant in sight. We've got about 65 minutes to eat lunch & go on the four hour tour to the sea coast. We hurriedly hoofed it to the grocery store, where we are reminded to park our trundlers HERE. Trundler? grocery cart for the non-natives. We headed to the deli, got a few salads and hoofed it back to the hotel. for those of you who know Gary, he cannot be rushed while he eats. he had about 10 minutes, and no food allowed on the van. Oh well .. we ate enough to stop our stomachs from grumbling.

We are having to reacquaint ourselves with the New Zealand Queen's english. Some of what's said is still flying right over our heads. The tour driver was focused on getting our vouchers. Fair enough .. then says "we must go for there are many togethers. Hmmm .. then Gary whispers "many to GATHER!!". Next up was the request to get back a little early to be dropped off on the brudie tour. I got that one "the BREWERY tour". I said hello to a friendly pair of children as we were hiking to the trundler store, and they stopped, shocked expressions on their faces. Gary really laughed yesterday, saying, "can you imagine how weird WE sound?"

The rata trees here are entering full bloom. they are a lush green, and cover themselves with bright red flowers. Our photos don't do them justice, but it was breathtaking seeing the bright red against the shiny green trees on the hillsides. The vegetation here shimmers in the sunlight. I've not been in a coastal rainforest like that one before. They have a rare rock formation called 'pancake rocks'. small horizontal layers in the hundreds, being beaten down by pounding waves. It's like Cappadocia set along the coast. Very unusual and worthwhile to visit.

After we dropped our thirsty, grateful companions at the brudie, we decided it was late enough our time to stay in at the hotel for dinner. It was absolutely superb. A group from Overseas adventure tours was also here, so it was a lively evening at the bar and restaurant. I managed to stay awake until 9, and slept until about 4:30 this morning.

today we are out of here at 7:30 for our tour of the Franz Joseph and Fox Glaciers. Gary's going to try to get a helicopter tour. Looking at our tour itinerary, there's not much time. I do have great faith, though, if it can be made to happen, Gary's my guy to do it.

Cheers, Anne