From: Tomer Morad [tomer_morad@hotmail.com] Sent: יום שלישי 15 ינואר 2002 10:54 To: tomer_morad@hotmail.com Subject: Tomer "one armed" Morad Hello from new zealand! This is my first email from new zealand. This country is definately the most beautiful place on earth. Everything here is so green and clean, you think that you are in a different world. Well, in some senses you are - When I got here i really missed speaking spanish. It is so easy for the traveller to get around here, because everyone here talkes english. But... they have a horrible accent, much worse than the britan accent! (no offence brits!) It is like they have their own little new zealand language. The people are also very nice. They tend to go out of their way to help you if you are in trouble or need to know something. When they hear that I am a traveller, most of them immediately say they are sorry. About what? About the weather... They should be! It is raining here almost every day, and I keep hearing this old story about how last year it was so sunny... I don't like hearing it! One thing about new zealand is immediately apparent when you get here: This place is DEAD. There is NOTHING to do at nighttime. NO nightlife whatsoever. The shops close really early and the streets are EMPTY! What a change from south america! I just saw the news on TV - Half of it was dedicated to a new zealander who won the international dart contest, and the other half was dedicated to a 60 year old woman who decided to do a bagrut in arts... Someone should wake these people up! Or is it us the israelis that are crazy? Speaking of Israel, did you know that israel is a superpower, with at least 100 million people? This is the impression you get from seeing all the israeli travellers here and in south america. I think that israel is the country which has the best tourism culture. We are practically everywhere, and in large quantities. Don't worry, I will explain the subject of this email soon... (thanks marco for the idea) Some facts first: I landed in christchurch, rented a car, and started driving north. As it was raining hard all the things i wanted to do were cancelled. I eventually ended up trekking the nelson lakes with three other people - One israeli, one american and one kiwi (kiwi = local from new zealand) Of course my shape did not improve since the machu pichu and I was again lagging behind, but it was fun. The views were great, including mountains, rivers and lakes. Did you know how much water they have here???? So.... I was walking and walking and walking... until we got to this river we had to cross (we had many to cross but this was a special one, as you will soon realise) I tried to cross it on some rocks like I usually do and i slipped into the river, getting very wet... So what happens when something bad happens to me on this trip? Right! Another bad thing! As an instinct I held out my hand so someone would pull me out of the river. That someone pulled my shoulder out - This is the shoulder I had a surgery in three years ago, to avoid it from dislocating. It took me two minutes to finally get it back in. For the final touch of the story it started raining so i became even wetter... I had to walk another four hours (being very depressed) to get back to civilization - Luckily I was at the end of the track, and not days away from the finish line. I then drove another four hours to a hospital to have my shoulder examined... Right now I am using a sling and have to rest until i get better. This will definately change a few plans... No happy ending this time - but this is not the end yet! Use your imagination for the next ephisode... :) Cheers! (the new zealand word for thank you, bye, etc...) Tomer. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.