New Zealand South Island Trip: Days 8- 9 (Post 5 of 8)
Day 8, Saturday 20 February: Queenstown: Lord of the Rings tour, Kiwi Bird Life Park and Luge
We were picked up at 8am for our Lord of the Rings Tour with Nomad Safaris. Our guide's name was Fran and she was awesome. The tour was fun and we had a good time reconciling the sights with scenes from the movie.
Our "Defender" four-wheel drive was named BILB0S. How cute is that? :)
Beautiful views of Lake Wakatipu
We took turns with seating, sometimes in front, sometimes in the middle and sometimes right out the back. Here's a view of the road from the back
Some of the filming from "Lord of the Rings" took place in and around the village of Glenorchy.
Beautiful views hurtled by
This was very funny. When you reach a place with the very prosaic name of "Dan's MPaddock", the area up the slops where the paddock and forest meet is where Gandalf rode up to Isengard. So Isengard is actually Dan's Paddock :D
Isengard
If you look closely, the telephone pole is basically where the Tower of Orthanc was placed digitally in the movie.
Milling around to see Isengard :)
Area around Dan's Paddock
Our sturdy vehicle took us along roads like this
In the background, you can see the snow capped area where the fellowship trekked and Boromir first was tempted to take the ring from Frodo. The actors were flown there by helicopter.
Here's the reminder :)
Then we entered the forest where they filmed the Fellowship entering Lothlórien and also the death of Boromir. Not only did we get to see the forest, but we had morning tea there, too :)
Uruk-Hai and Hobbits hiding everywhere? :)
As a souvenir, Fran also gave us a forced perspective photograph in the forest :)
This is the Twelve Mile Delta i.e. Ithilien and where Sam saw his first Oliphant and they also watched the battle between the men of Harad and the Rangers of Gondor.
Fran with the souvenir book that we purchased
Reminder:
Now - although Mount Doom was represented by the volcanoes of Mount Ngauruhoe (active) and Mount Ruapehu, (active) on the North Island, they were apparently photoshopped onto mountains near Queenstown. The brown section on the left is Deer Park Heights which in "The Two Towers" was where they filmed the Warg attack
And because I never get sick of seeing the beautiful mountains :D
Then we went to the Kiwi Birdlife Park.
We caught our first glimpse of a living kiwi bird - and saw them being fed. Almost every New Zealander we met had to tell us about how the kiwi was a flightless bird and was now vulnerable because in the earlier days, there had been no predators.
Kiwi birds are nocturnal so we could not take photographs of the two that we saw. So here's a photo taken by someone else :)
The bird life park was beautiful with gorgeous trees and paths.
We whiled away much time at the Bird Life Park
We saw the Kea bird
Lizard
I forget the names of these birds!
Cute ducklings
A very fat, smug wood pigeon
After that, we took gondolas back up the skyline tower, took a chairlift higher up - and then rode the luge down. It was wonderful. I also never grew tired of the views from the top of the tower
Finally, at around 4pm or so, we realised that we'd skipped lunch and so went in search of a snack. Chocolates sundaes from Lick: Dessert Bar and Espresso.
It's clear that Queenstown gets a LOT of Chinese tourists from the mainland, hence these signs in the toilets at the Bird Life Park and also on top of the tower. It's the reverse of the situation in China and so the Chinese must be dumping their loo paper in the bin instead of the toilet.
While we were doing our Lord of the Rings tour, some of the group were on the day-long Routeburn Track hike. This was to be a fateful hike because following this hike, several members of our group fell ill with a cold that was to prove a wee bit contagious.
Day 9, Sunday 21 February: Queenstown
On Sunday we had 'free time', so the Canadian and I slept in just a little bit and then went for a lovely wander around the peninsula, went to The Cow Restaurant for lunch and had ice creams from Patagonia Chocolates.
The Canadian tried the local beer.
It was a wonderfully relaxing day and we kept bumping into people from our tour as we ambled.
We spent some time in the Queenstown gardens
The board walk in the evening
We were picked up at 8am for our Lord of the Rings Tour with Nomad Safaris. Our guide's name was Fran and she was awesome. The tour was fun and we had a good time reconciling the sights with scenes from the movie.
Our "Defender" four-wheel drive was named BILB0S. How cute is that? :)
Beautiful views of Lake Wakatipu
We took turns with seating, sometimes in front, sometimes in the middle and sometimes right out the back. Here's a view of the road from the back
Some of the filming from "Lord of the Rings" took place in and around the village of Glenorchy.
Beautiful views hurtled by
This was very funny. When you reach a place with the very prosaic name of "Dan's MPaddock", the area up the slops where the paddock and forest meet is where Gandalf rode up to Isengard. So Isengard is actually Dan's Paddock :D
Isengard
If you look closely, the telephone pole is basically where the Tower of Orthanc was placed digitally in the movie.
Milling around to see Isengard :)
Area around Dan's Paddock
Our sturdy vehicle took us along roads like this
In the background, you can see the snow capped area where the fellowship trekked and Boromir first was tempted to take the ring from Frodo. The actors were flown there by helicopter.
Here's the reminder :)
Then we entered the forest where they filmed the Fellowship entering Lothlórien and also the death of Boromir. Not only did we get to see the forest, but we had morning tea there, too :)
Uruk-Hai and Hobbits hiding everywhere? :)
As a souvenir, Fran also gave us a forced perspective photograph in the forest :)
This is the Twelve Mile Delta i.e. Ithilien and where Sam saw his first Oliphant and they also watched the battle between the men of Harad and the Rangers of Gondor.
Fran with the souvenir book that we purchased
Reminder:
Now - although Mount Doom was represented by the volcanoes of Mount Ngauruhoe (active) and Mount Ruapehu, (active) on the North Island, they were apparently photoshopped onto mountains near Queenstown. The brown section on the left is Deer Park Heights which in "The Two Towers" was where they filmed the Warg attack
And because I never get sick of seeing the beautiful mountains :D
Then we went to the Kiwi Birdlife Park.
We caught our first glimpse of a living kiwi bird - and saw them being fed. Almost every New Zealander we met had to tell us about how the kiwi was a flightless bird and was now vulnerable because in the earlier days, there had been no predators.
Kiwi birds are nocturnal so we could not take photographs of the two that we saw. So here's a photo taken by someone else :)
The bird life park was beautiful with gorgeous trees and paths.
We whiled away much time at the Bird Life Park
We saw the Kea bird
Lizard
I forget the names of these birds!
Cute ducklings
A very fat, smug wood pigeon
After that, we took gondolas back up the skyline tower, took a chairlift higher up - and then rode the luge down. It was wonderful. I also never grew tired of the views from the top of the tower
Finally, at around 4pm or so, we realised that we'd skipped lunch and so went in search of a snack. Chocolates sundaes from Lick: Dessert Bar and Espresso.
It's clear that Queenstown gets a LOT of Chinese tourists from the mainland, hence these signs in the toilets at the Bird Life Park and also on top of the tower. It's the reverse of the situation in China and so the Chinese must be dumping their loo paper in the bin instead of the toilet.
While we were doing our Lord of the Rings tour, some of the group were on the day-long Routeburn Track hike. This was to be a fateful hike because following this hike, several members of our group fell ill with a cold that was to prove a wee bit contagious.
Day 9, Sunday 21 February: Queenstown
On Sunday we had 'free time', so the Canadian and I slept in just a little bit and then went for a lovely wander around the peninsula, went to The Cow Restaurant for lunch and had ice creams from Patagonia Chocolates.
The Canadian tried the local beer.
It was a wonderfully relaxing day and we kept bumping into people from our tour as we ambled.
We spent some time in the Queenstown gardens
The board walk in the evening