Friday 11 March.. later in day

Kia Ora,

We turned in our campervan and bade it a tearful farewell. Loved it. Loved the stops at Holiday Parks or Top Ten Parks and never knowing what we would find. The most we paid for a one night stop was $46 NZ... about $40 US. And we could cook and do laundry and 99% of bathrooms were fabulous. And we did get very used to the driving. Seems strange that we will not be driving for the next week.

We checked into our hotel, The Copthorne in Queenstown at 12:30 and were amazed at having two beds, our own bathroom and room to stand up! Met our tour guide who is very nice, fit, fun. Her name is Marilyn (or Em). We are six riders all together: Greg who is a native Kiwi, but lives in Sydney; Peggy who is from Connecticut; and Mac and Sherry from Ontario who just got off a ten day challenging bike tour. Our guide got us all set up on our bikes and put my clips on my bike. She was quite appalled at how dirty my clips were. Oops. We will be driven out of Queenstown tomorrow and dropped off out of town, to peddle as many of the 173 km. we choose. We are hoping to do about 60-65 kms. (45 miles). We shall see.

Mimi’s bungee jump in the rain was superb.  Unlike many who sort of sidled up to the edge and hesitated their way off, Mimi dove with hesitation, and had good fun. The video will be for your viewing pleasure when we get home!

Now we are about to turn in, watching news media coverage of the awful earthquake in Japan just a few hours ago and the tsunami alert across this area of the world.  

Rest assured, we are on very high ground.   

And again, due to bike trip departure early tomorrow morning, we may or may not be in contact for a few days.


Woke up this Saturday morning to the horrors of the earthquake and the tsunami. How awful.


ciao for now