And We're Off

Piggybacking on someone's internet here so I'll make this quick..

We made it to New Zealand.. not without issues, we flew into LAX and realized that we had nine hours to kill. So we took the public bus to Santa Monica and went to the pier. It was nice to get a little slice of LA. It was just long enough to confirm that all our preconceptions were true.

Quick flight down to Auckland, felt like a redeye - we slept most of the way.

Six hour layover in Auckland, ick. Got into Queenstown at 2pm or so, got a nice upgrade on the rental car (a Corolla, by NZ standards pretty phat) and spent the afternoon taking a quick drive. We're trying to reset our body clocks to NZ time. The layovers helped with it, surprisingly.

Anyway we are safe and sound and reacting horribly to bland NZ food (even "gourmet" alfredo sauce has no taste whatsoever).

Relaxing here for a few days then we'll probly head down to Te Anau and deeper into Fiordland.

We had our first blip: Gina lost her Oakleys on the plane. The guy at the airport said they found them, but couldn't find them within the lost and found office. A first class operation to be sure. Hopefully we can reclaim them when we go through AKL next time.

Hope all is well with you all back home.

-Bob