Fellow Travelers

The hostel seems to be filled with other foreign (to NZ)travelers. Judging from the babel in the background, they seem mostly from Northern Europe. I've recognized German, Dutch, Hebrew and a Scandanavian langusge. Their are also some young Asians in the hostel, which just about filled up last night. Just a few KIwis and I'm the only American. Coming over on the ferry, about half of the cyclists (we had to group together to get on) were from the US.

From this morning's paper, it seems that there has been a record year in tourism in New Zealand. While there has been a fall off from the US (you couldn't judge it by the flight over), it seems to have been made up by an increase in visitors from Asia. That is really a big difference from my last trip here in 1996. Then the only Asians you saw were packs of Japanese tourists in tour groups, most older people. Now there seem to be many more young people traveling independently.

Set the clock

Since it is a cloudy windy morning and I was just sitting here, I reset the clock on my laptop. This post is the first one dated on NZ time.