Some Armenia links & Should we buy a 4x4?

http://www.armenialiberty.org/
http://www.armenianow.com/

The site on which I found said links:
http://democracyguy.typepad.com/

Back from New Zealand - Part 2

We left Sydney on the morning of February 2nd and flew to Christchurch, South Island of New Zealand. We flew right in over the mountains, and just knew that we were in for days full of beautiful vistas. Misty sat next to "Mr. Phlegm" - a young, American, ipod-clad backpacker whose Mother would be very upset to know that he's not taking care of himself. We were chanting and praying and meditating the whole way hoping that he wasn't going to give us a cold. We ended up being just fine. In fact we were more than fine once our oxygen-starved lungs breathed in the fresh clean air at the Christchurch International Airport. Oh yes. Even the airport had cleaner air than good old Manila.

We were transported to the Campervan rental place by their shuttle, spent a fifteen minutes with a snotty rental agent signing papers and then it was outside for a blitzkrieg tour of 'Lucy' as we came to call our large-rumped Ford Transit Campervan. She then proceeded to toss our bags in the back, handed me the keys and unleashed us into rush-hour traffic. Right-hand drive, airport traffic. The first few minutes driving were pretty interesting, but I think the local drivers were quite used to us, and in fact we WERE driving a large, hot-pink striped vehicle very slowly. They found it quite easy to avoid me.

We went immediately to a grocery and stocked up on supplies (including beers for the anticipated driver decompression period after parking the behemoth for the night). We got on the road right after that, and found ourselves outside the city in rolling, amber farmland inside of thirty minutes. Once out on the country roads, windows down and 'John Wayne' air coursing through the cabin, we were miles closer to our Happy Place. We planned to drive as far south as possible, and it was easy while the sun was up... until around 8:30pm. We then realized that this close ot the South pole, during the summertime, we would be graced with at least 12 hours of daylight. In fact I just looked it up and around the glaciers where we stayed (We'll get to those later), dawn is around 5:30AM, and sunset is at 10PM!

Needless to say, we were pretty tuckered out after traveling all day and we stopped at the first of many holiday parks for the night...

to be continued...

New Zealand R&R - Sydney, Days one and two...

We just got back from New Zealand, land of clean, fresh air, food and water. I'm currently testing out posting to blogger.com, so bear with us as we introduce this new 'feature' into jetsetset dot net. I'm currently at work babysitting some of the local staff as they do some filing so I thought that I'd add a bit about our most recent trip while I'm trapped in my office.

We flew out of nasty, old Manila on Saturday the 29th to arrive in Sydney early the next morning. Neither Misty or I could sleep, so we sat up and watched movies and had cocktails. Needless to say we were grumpy Sunday morning, and had breakfast, checked in to our hotel, and crashed for a nice, long nap. We didn't really do a whole lot in Sydney outside of going to the zoo (to see kangaroos, koalas, and hedgehogs). The most memorable part of Sydney for me though was the Sheaf Burger. Mmm, mmm. Who knew that beets were a yummy burger topping!?!?

To be continued once we arrive in Christchurch...