March 29

Awake to sunrise but threating sky as a weather front is moving in. Breakfast and then on to our optional off road adventure and into the land of the Hobbits and Wakatipu Basin. We are riding in Range Rovers and our driver Graham gives us a narrative as we drive along through the town. Our first stop is at an outlook above Queenstown as we await other vehicles to join our group. When everyone arrives, Graham talks to the entire group, (4 vehicles, ~25 people). His company has a photo album that shows different scenes from the Lord of the Rings. At this first stop he points out the hill and mountains that were used in the second movie. We drive on and turn onto a winding, narrow (1 lane) unpaved road that literally hangs above the gorge river and that takes us back to a winery, where we turn around and stop at a viewing point over the Kawarau river. The winery is getting ready for harvest and is squeezed in between the mountains and the river. It is a narrow stretch of land and the river is running about 200 feet below shear rock face cliffs. Another tour guide goes over the scenes that were filmed here, and fact that because of the heavy rains during the shooting of the film the river flood and hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment was lost in the river. At the same point we turn our attention to the opposite side of the road and wait to see a bungee jumper jump off the bridge over the river, originally used for car traffic. New Zealand is known for the bungee jumps and they and their customers are crazy. Next onto Arrowtown, this is an old gold town and we are driven in and through the Arrow River and joisted all around the vehicle before we stop for morning coffee and try our luck at gold panning. No big discoveries made, though Chuck finds a few flakes. The tour then takes us up a mountain trail that goes through Skipper Canyon toward an old gold mining town of Skipper. The trail basically has room for only one vehicle with sheer cliffs on the driver’s side on the way up/in. On the way back out we stop for photo opportunities and one last stop by a river before being dropped off at our hotel. All of this in just 4 hours. The Lord of the Ring Sites we saw on our adventure include White Mountains, Minas Trith, Pillars of the Kings, Gladden Fields, Ford of Bruinen, Wang attack, Exodus of Edoras, Willow, Vertical Limits and the Water Horse Locations. Rain held off until we got back to the hotel. Quick visit to the room and then back out into town to visit the bank, get lunch, do some shopping, and some downtime as the group is scheduled to go on a boat tour and visit to sheep farm for dinner. We board the TSS Earnslaw for a 35 minute cruise across Lake Wakatipu to the Mt. Walter station (farm), where we have a buffet dinner. The TSS Earnslaw is powered by a coal firing engine and built the same year as the Titanic.  It survived all the decommission of the coal powered steam boats and it now under historic preservation.  It takes a ton of coal a day and we able to watch the crew stoke the engine from above. After dinner our guide takes us to see their deer and feed them. There is a large 16 point buck in the herd.  The deer are raised for meat. Then we watch demonstration by a shepherd and his sheep dog round up sheep, and then he sheers a sheep for us. Back on to the TSS Earnslaw where they do a sing-a-long on the trip back to the Queenstown dock. A short walk to the hotel and then it is bedtime, for tomorrow we travel to Mt. Cook. Nighty-night.