eagletravels

It is dawn, Wednesday morning, on the top deck of the Milford Mariner, moored in Hamilton Cove in the Milford Sound.  A cloudless sky, slowly brightening, the Southern Cross still shining overhead.  Wow.   We started our voyage to Milford yesterday morning.  After a somewhat hurried breakfast at Joe's Garage (our third in a row; what a great place!) we boarded our bus.  Our driver was Carl.  He said hello.  Then didn't stop talking the rest of the day.  Born and raised on the South Island near Queenstown, a former guide, he was a fount of knowledge about everything kiwi.  At one point Andie said to me, "he talked about wool for twenty minutes.  That's when I stopped listening."  He also talked about deer farming, the difference between fencing for deer farming vs. sheep farming, the details on the road on which we were driving, the deterioration of the quality of driving on said road, the reason for said deterioration, and many other things.  He was delig

Looking down at Auckland I have resolved to start up my old practice of keeping travel logs, just like I did the last time I graced New Zealand's shores.  It was 1986, I was 25 years old and headed to Wharton in a few months, the travel log was a paper notebook, and Ronald Reagan was President.  Who'd have thought that it would be the last of those facts for which I would be most wistful now, 31 years later??? Andie and I departed SJC on Thursday afternoon, Mar 30,  for a 9 day Spring break trip.  Andie was faux annoyed at me for not letting her skip Spanish class that afternoon.  ("I'm gonna steal ur food on the flight and you'll have nothing to eat, so there.  Ur in for a long 16 hours sir," read the text.)  The trip was long and smooth, we even made a rather short connection in Auckland with 20 minutes to spare, and arrived Saturday mid-day in Queenstown. Saturday afternoon, shores of Lake Wakatipu We checked into our AirBnB apartment, with a