Day 8: Riding and Wining and Dining

Tuesday, September 9th~

I got up around 7 today, showered, got my stuff together, and went to breakfast. It had to be an early start because at 8:30, I got picked up by Dart Stables to go and do The Ride of the Rings!!! We stopped in Glenorchy to get rain coats and helmets, and then continued on to the very aptly named township of Paradise. There were only 4 people plus the guide, so it was a nice small group. We were each paired with a horse, and then we set off. Mine was Chester, a beautiful ginger horse and sort of the leader of the pack. He liked to walk near the front of the line, which was hunky dory with me. We rode through the cold and drenching rain to see various sites from Lord of the Rings filming, including Loth Lorien, the distant site of Isengard, the field where Gandalf calls Shadowfax, and where Boromir was killed. However, the fun didn’t end there! We also saw places where they filmed scenes for the upcoming X-men spin-off Wolverine, where Prince Caspian fell from his horse and Trufflehunter’s house from The Chronicles of Narnia, and where they filmed some scenes for Willow! Very exciting stuff. Apparently, Peter Jackson also filmed some scenes there for The Lovely Bones, which is fun because the bulk of the filming was done back in Westchester, PA. Small world! And yes, since it was raining, I managed to get soaked on this activity, too.

I got back to Queenstown in time to meet the group to go on the Gondola (the steepest in the world), and the luge (a kind of go-cart situation, supposedly very fun), but most people bailed when they heard the luge was closed due to rain. Scotty, Megan, Laura T., Tracey and I still went for the gondola experience. I imagine it’s quite magnificent when there aren’t clouds shrouding your view. We chatted over hot beverages in the café at the top and browsed the souvenir selection before heading back down the mountain. When we got down, I left the others to go and check out the Kiwi and Birdlife Park. Why do I insist on observing animals in the rain? I walked around for a while and determined that it definitely wasn’t worth the $33. And that was with the YHA discount. But it was cool to see the Kiwis. They’re nocturnal, so I couldn’t take any pictures, but I still enjoyed the spectacle. I was shocked at how big they are; I always figured they were, like, the same size as the fruit, but these guys were the size of basketballs!

I went from there to wander around downtown Queenstown and Ran into Laura T. and Tracey again. They were on their way to taste wine and I hastily joined them. The shop we went to was really cool! The walls were lined with bottles of wine, enclosed behind glass and hooked up to dispensers. When you get there, you get a card and can either use it as a credit card and pay on your way out, or put money on it and use it like a debit card; then they give you a wine glass and you insert your card into the various dispensers , push a button and presto! Wine for the tasting! I stuck to New Zealand wines, and studiously recorded every one that I tasted, mostly so that I could hold and intelligent conversation with Cassy later. After we had sampled as much as we could before they kicked us out for a private function, we went to the food court to get a light Indian snack, then headed back to our room at the Lakeview Holiday Park.

It ended up being a pretty quiet Tuesday evening; everyone split up for dinner. Scotty, Laura T., Tracey, Vicki and I went to a delightful pub, The Pig and Whistle. I had bangers and mash and some yummy Montheith’s Black. Totally delish; I would recommend it to anyone passing through Queenstown. We went to the Buffalo Club to meet the rest of the group, but shortly after we got there, almost everyone left to go to bed. I stuck around for a little bit, but before long, the rest of us decided to head back, too. Kind of a bummer of a night out, but hey, at least I didn’t spend a lot of money.