Catching up

OK, so this evening, I won't gripe about internet connections. Finally found a spot where I can hook up my computer and therefore upload some photos (for a mere $4/hr.) Ironically enough, we are in the glacial region of New Zealand, far away from the cities.

So, before I start with the NZ commentary, I thought I'd get a few shots in from the busy few weeks before we left for NZ. So, stepping into the 'Wayback Machine', here we go.....

In the beginning of February, we had a great time with Liz's school chum Phil and his partner Deej. Here we are sampling one of 9 (I think it was) varieties of Moorilla wines. A fun trip that transported us up the Derwent river to the winery on a catamaran. Oh yeah, we sampled cheeses and fruit spreads, too.



On the way to Port Arthur, we stopped to see the tessellated pavement. Tessellated refers to the natural scoring process that etches the rocks with perpendicular lines. Phil had fun composing many sentences that used the term tessellated in the following week. If you haven't seen them yet, there are lot's of photos of the old buildings at Port Arthur on the .mac site.



We also stopped in Richmond, where there's a very old bridge, constructed by convict labor.





And, speaking of bridges, here a shot of the Tasman bridge at the point where one of the supporting pillars was knocked down by an out of control barge. Whenever we've taken a tourist boat up the Derwent, we always here accounts of this accident. The barge sank. The road actually started to collapse, and a few cars went down in the night, not realizing that the road had been damaged. Those of you in Albany will catch the similarity with the recent disjointing of the elevated expressway. More news photos here.