We Made It!!!! (most of us) (just kidding)

The group is in a place near Christchurch on the South Island of New Zealand in the beautiful country residence of Graham and Sue Williams, the gracious hosts of today's YGA lunch and the former host 'mum' and 'ded' for Matt and Mary's life here a few years ago. We are all a bit tired and trying to take in a lot of things at once but first impressions are favorable - high 60s with a warm, gentle breeze - Beautiful flowers, friendly people, mountains, fields, rivers. I'll leave the rest of the description to my more poetic co-blogger Caitlin.

btw: the current time here is ~ 11:45 am on Feb. 9. I'll leave it up to you to figure out the time difference because I'm too exhausted.

The day after our first and only night in San Francisco we had breakfast and headed out across the Golden Gate Bridge towards Muir Woods National Forest which is maybe the best place to get acquianted with the california redwood and sequoia trees. it was more chilly than most people expected and there wasn't a lot of sunlight coming down through the 100 ft. canopy. But we were too distracted by the natural beauty to notice. Truly an experience beyond words. Just picture a tree that could be surrounded by no fewer than a dozen people arm to arm!





In the afternoon we drove to Sausalito and had a picnic lunch down on the bay amidst a panaromic view of the Golden Gate as well as all of San Fran and Berkeley and Oakland in the distance. The Bay area is really unique among Urban areas in the U.S. in that it is very hilly and has plainview of other metropolitan areas from almost any point therein. It has a very mediterranean feel and seems to be the only place in the U.S. where you are going to find a really good vegetarian sandwich with avocadoes and sprouts and fresh lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, cheese. Anyway, Sausalito is as idyllic a place to live as I can imagine and we had some good entertainment flipping through some local real estate magazines on the way back to the car.

From there it was back to the hotel and on to the airport for a pleasant 12+ hour jaunt on an over-booked 777. In the words of Mary's Mom, "We survived." And caught our connecting flight from Auckland to Christchurch just as the sun rose (on what some suspect to have been the "wrong horizon"), tea was served, and the impressive grid of the North Island stretched out from the mountains to the water.

Hours later, we're safe and sound and enjoying enormous hospitality, so I'm going to grab my first non-airline food in days. Later today we'll take a winery tour and tomorrow morning we swim with the dolphins.