From: "innabakker@att.net" <innabakker@att.net>
Subject: Re: #14-world tour, New Zealand-Southern island
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 13:56:01 +0000
My dear family and friends
Happy Hanukkah
Happy New Year
Merry Christmas
Happy Kwanza
best wishes for health and happiness
i am in New Zealand-"on the bottom of the globe" please look at the map reading this email
NZ consists of 3 islands: 2 big - Southern and Northern and 1
small-Steward. millions of years agot here was a huge continent-
Gondwana land near the South Pole, than it split into South America,
Africa, India, Australia, Antarctica and New Zealand, overtime
lands drifted apart-it called "continental shift".
First to discover NZ was a Dutchman Abel Tasman and he named this land
Novo Zeeland after Netherlands coastal area in 1642, 100 years later
James Cook sailed to NZ 3 times,
as a country NZ is very young, only 160 years old, only 4 millions
people and 50 millions sheeps, i flew from Melbourn
to Cristchurch, joined 2 week bus tour, going through Southern island
for 1 week, it is an amazing country, the beauty of everchanging
landscape;
Southern Alps, gorges, lakes, rivers,glaciers, fiords, waterfalls,
forests, greenary, flowers,plains,etc. hard to describe, words do not
convey the feeling of being in a wonderland, here is summer, wether is
very pleasant, not too hot, not too cold, 17-22C, white nights-getting
dark around 10 pm,
in Cristchurch i visited International Antarctic Center where they
"reproduced" Antarctica to have an interactive experience, i had an
outdoor ride on :Antarctic" terrain inside amphibious vehicle-
hagglund made in Sweden and used in Antarctica, i also went
through " Antarctic storm" created by windchill machine, all expedition
to Antarctica take off from here.
we drove through Mount Cook national park, Fiordland national park, had
a boat ride in Milford Sound and Tasman sea, scenic is spectacular,
in Duneidin we visited a historic home Olveston which was built
by a jewish family in the beginning of the 20 th century and later was
given to the city with a lot of wonderful collections, what is amazing
-family business was importing pianos to this young farmer's
country, in 1901 here was 43,000 pianos, 14,000 music teachers and
population was only 800,000,
in alpine resort Queenstown i had a helicopter flight over Mt. Cook-the
highest peak in NZ [12,340 feet] and landing and walking on snow,
again words do not describe how majestic it is,
there i did something first time-hang gliding, instructor drove to the
top of the mountain where is a ski lift , strapped both of us to glider
[ it is huge huge wings], we ran down until we took off and we
are in the air flying like birds, photo camera was attached in front of
us recording my fear and screaming, it was terrifying and so
challanging to overcome fear, but than it was so great to feel
flying, looking down on mountains, forests, birds, we were
on level of 14 floor, what a power of a human mind-flying like birds,
the same principal of these wings as birds wings, and we were flying
horizontaly like birds,
being in NZ , learning about this country is a very happy experience,
love to all.
