Need advice on a new digital camera

Hi Folks,
lucky enough to be heading to New Zealand on a holiday and would like to upgrade my digital camera. I would really appreciate advice / recommendations you could give about upgrading to a good / reasonable priced digitial camera, with good zoom capabilities.

For such a holiday, I would go for a "bridge" type camera - a category of cameras below SLRs but with a high range of facilities.

My own is the Kodak P712 IS. That is 7Megapixels 12x Zoom
Excellent German lens. Electronic viewfinder as well as LCD screen. Excellent range of auto, semi-auto facilities, and manual facilities. Has a hot-shoe which is useful if you want to add a high-power flash. (I need that for internal photos of large buildings) Good review here - the current model is very slightly upgraded.
Kodak also has the Z712 - has most of the same facilities - cheaper

Olympus has recently brought out the SP550 UZ which is the only one I know on the market with 18x zoom - excellent reports - a friend is buying this at the moment. Argos stocks it, but it can be bought online very much cheaper. Here is the lowest I can find

Very important to ensure that any camera with high zoom has image stabilisation - otherwise, many good photos will be ruined by camera shake

try but make sure the item you want is "in stock" or else there will be a delay. also [broken link removed] is another reliable & competitive site that deliver to ROI.

www.dpreview.com is a widely recognised site for camera reviews. Canon S3 IS and S5 IS are two to look out for. Panasonic Lumix Fz8, FZ50 are good bridge cameras.

If you want something smaller then a Panasonic TZ3 could be a good option - it has 10X optical zoom.