Auckland

Auckland

Our first full day in Auckland. It is the largest city in NZ, but a mere million in population. As you can see from my picture of one of the main beaches, it is bustling for a late Sat. morning :). The lack of population (four million total for the two islands with a total land mass about the size of Oregon) is one of the joys of NZ--traffic jams and pushing through crowds is a rare event. Anne and I toured the city on foot then went to a walk-through aquarium/penguin habitat and the Auckland museum and winter gardens conservatory. The second pic is Anne sitting on an eel sculpture in one of the parks and the 3rd of a lily pad pond in the conservatory. Those pads were as big as an I-Hop pancake! Eels hold a special place in the heart of Kiwis so they are represented in a lot of places. Tomorrow we are off on a plane flight to the other island to begin our first multi-sport tour. Cheers!

Peggy is in charge of the blog for the New Zealand trip. If you want Anne's pictures and take on the day, become her friend on facebook. The first day does not start in New Zealand, as we spent three days getting from Seattle to New Zealand, which included an eight hour layover in Hong Kong. Therefore, first post is of our tour of Hong Kong. We took the high-speed train to down town Hong Kong and did a walking tour of the food markets and some of the old buildings. Two of the pictures are of the dried fish markets and a vegetable stall. I could only guess at the identity of many of the items. The third picture is of incense coils that hung from the ceiling of an old church. I decided by the time we left the church that the daily church staff seemed "incensitive" to the issue of second-hand smoke in a public area :)

We also went to a delightful botanical/zoological garden. Hong Kong has many high rises, ranging from very modern to barely standing. However, there seemed to be a lot of repair going on to the older buildings. All in all, the people of Hong Kong were very friendly to us and seemed to be working hard to have a pleasant, livable city.

Headed to New Zealand and beyond

We head out this afternoon for a travel marathon. We'll spend 5 weeks in New Zealand and then a week with our friends the Sibson's in Adelaide, South Australia. We'll be posting on both Facebook and this blog, so stay tuned.

Anne

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Joshua Tree National Park

We drove up to Joshua Tree National park today, and took a hike. It is a spectacular desert park, with lots of Joshua trees, and big rocks.

We hiked up Ryan Mountain, only 3 miles roundtrip but steep, 1000 plus feet vertical. We'll be sore tomorrow. I felt good, and am thankful that I can hike, when 3 months ago I was using a walker.

Palm Springs

Peggy and I drove down Wednesday from Alameda to use up some condo points in Palm Springs. It is warm and sunny down here, got up to 82 yesterday. We are putting in some miles on the bikes, and walking. Yesterday we biked into Palm Springs and had a nice lunch at the Kaiser Grille, sitting outside in the sun.