New Zealand

David Tua vividly recalls the painful lessons he endured as a youth in New Zealand, learning to box under the tough discipline of his father, Tuavale, a former middleweight."

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- New Zealanders are generally no more or less rapacious than anyone else, but right now they do seem to be intent on wringing every last dollar out of the America's Cup being contested here. With the regatta's final series, between Italy's Prada and defender Team New Zealand, set to get under way here Feb. 19, prices in top-end hotels have shot up. In some cases they have almost doubled in the past week. At the 272-room Hyatt Regency, the standard room rate has gone up from $118 to $180.

Follow the money, a certain anonymous source told Watergate reporter Bob Woodward about 25 years ago, and that advice often serves consumers well too. But if you're a traveler looking for bargains abroad, you're better off doing the opposite: Follow the enfeebled economies.Mostly, that means checking out nations whose currency buys substantially fewer dollars than it did a year or two ago - such as the nations of Southeast Asia, but also often-overlooked destinations such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- A fading, fickle breeze created havoc at the start of Leg 5 of the Whitbread Round the World Race in Auckland's Waitemata Harbour today, with the nine 60-footers wallowing like half-tide rocks in a seaway.In freakish conditions for this renowned windy city, the weak northerly sea breeze struggled against the gradient wind to produce glassy, millpond conditions that turned the race out of the harbor into a lottery. Chaos is the only word that could describe it.Followed by an armada of more than 500 spectator boats, the fleet got away to a clean but conservative start in a light following southerly breeze, but within 20 minutes the boats slowed to a slatting halt with their masthead gennakers collapsed and limp.

Having completed the most extensive, intensive and expensive training an American soccer team so young has ever received, the Maryland-flavored, U.S. Under-17 men's squad flies to New Zealand today in quest of a world championship.Coached by John Ellinger, a Frostburg State alumnus whose resume includes nine years as men's coach at UMBC, the American team features three Maryland starters.They are midfielder Kyle Beckerman of Crofton and Arundel High; and defenders Alex Yi, an Easton resident who attended McDonogh, and Olney's Oguchi Onyewu, from Bullis Prep.

When Judy Thacker asked if I'd like to pick rhubarb from her garden for breakfast, I knew we were in the right place.And when her husband, Kerry, yanked corks from three good New Zealand wines that night, followed by a bottle of champagne, all six guests at their bed and breakfast inn knew we were sampling the essence of New Zealand hospitality.The restored farmhouse with its high-ceilinged rooms -- the Thackers call it Kawatea -- sits about a mile from the sea at Okains Bay, near Akaroa on the Banks Peninsula, southeast of Christchurch.

The next America's Cup series will not occur until 2000, but entries for challenges to New Zealand's hold on the Cup closed recently and 18 syndicates from 10 countries have thrown down the gage.Six of the challenge syndicates are from the United States, including a last-minute entry by Dennis Conner and the Cortez Racing Association in San Diego, a club without even a clubhouse.Conner is the only American to lose the Cup since the schooner America routed a fleet of English yachts in England in 1851 -- and Conner lost it twice, in 1983 and 1995.

WASHINGTON - A U.S. Navy warplane mistakenly dropped a 500-pound bomb on a group of military observers during a training exercise in Kuwait yesterday, killing six people, including five American service members, officials said. Five other U.S. personnel were injured, officials said. Two were treated at a hospital and released, and three remain hospitalized with injuries that aren't life-threatening. The accident occurred when a Navy F/A-18 Hornet, flying off the carrier USS Harry S. Truman in the Persian Gulf, dropped a bomb during a nighttime exercise involving U.S., British and New Zealand planes.

Of all the reasons to visit New Zealand, killing a red stag wasn't on my list. But that's what got me to the Southern Hemisphere. My brother Kevin has been an outdoorsman for most of his 47 years and wanted to bag a trophy deer with Shane Quinn's Alpine Hunting Adventures on the North Island. All I needed was an excuse to see that part of the world, so I asked him if I could tag along as a nonhunting guest. "But you don't like dead animals," Kevin said over the phone from his home in Colorado.

Group Capt. Desmond James Scott, 79, New Zealand's most decorated World War II fighter pilot, died Wednesday in Christchurch, New Zealand. He had the rare distinction of being decorated by every country in which he served.Bishop Aloisius Nobuo Soma, 81, a Roman Catholic bishop, Nobel laureate and human rights advocate, died Monday in Nagoya, Japan. A co-winner of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize, he had long spoken out against Indonesian human rights abuses in East Timor.Pub Date: 10/11/97