After landing in New Zealand, we spent several minutes becoming comfortable with driving on the left side of the road, then picked a winding mountain road to go explore in the rain.  (Me?  Scared?)

Some scenes of "Xena:  Warrior Princes" were shot on the beach at Piha, on the west coast south of Auckland.  We didn't see Xena, but Jennifer strikes a good pose.

My brother, Phil, wanted me to bring him back rocks.  Here I am collecting black sand in a 35 mm film can.

Karakere is another beach near Piha.  I collected another rock here, but not from this pile.

It looks like a loose slide of rocks and sand, but it's actually all rigid rock.  I did find a loose rock on the beach nearby.