conigirl, I'm in the same boat you are. I've been looking for a low mileage 99 or 00 5spd 4Runner for a while. Really hard to find. There was one in Ohio a couple weeks ago, and I was going to drive up and buy it, but somebody beat me to it by a day. Only had like 86k or so on it. I've just about given up, so I've been leaning towards just getting a 4th gen.

Anyways, if I spot a 5spd 4runner in your area during my search, I'll post it in this thread.