Fri Feb 1 10pm
We're in Queenstown. I still haven't seen the southern skies @ night. It stays light until 9:30 - keeps confusing me that it's summer here. Queenstown is a lot like Breckenridge but smaller. It's much cooler here.

This hotel is very nice & it's a short walk to town. We do an all-day bus/boat tour tomorrow to fjord country (leave @ 6:45am)

We turned our cell phones on in Auckland to see if we could use them for alarm clocks & to my surprise, they had the right time & date & had a signal, tho it said roaming. I wouldn't dare try to dial, but yesterday got a text msg from verizon that said "urgent, dial *86". Now I'm afraid we got charged for just having them on. I'm scared to dial *86 tho - will it cost an arm & a leg? Maybe I should just leave my phone off - it's such a good alarm clock tho.

Sat, 3pm
We're on the bus on our way back from Milford Sound, a beautiful fjord on the West coast. It's clear and sunny and warm today. It was a long trip here but was worth it - waterfalls & mountains & stuff. We get to sleep in tomorrow, hooray! Melissa is listening to Lord of the Rings on her ipod - this is very familiar scenery here. Tomorrow is jet-boat & maybe bungee. Do I have the nerve to really do this? Stay tuned.

7pm
They have deer farms here & export venison & make things out of possum fur - weird, right?