Thursday, September 25, 2014

New Zealand-Day 6, Part 1

We started our morning out with a drive to The Remarkables ski area for our paragliding adventure.  We wanted to do some type of adrenaline pumping, adventure activity and we knew sky diving, bungee jumping or canyon swinging were out of the question, so Brian, Beth & I decided on this!  The scariest part of it, was the drive up the mountain!  Sudip was there (along with Mom and the kids watching) to take pictures of all the action!  What a cool experience!

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They told us to just walk fast/run and then we were flying!

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Beth & I from down below (Brian was taking these after his flight)

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After our morning fun, we grabbed lunch and hit the road.  We went on our own Lord of the Rings driving tour.  I had spent some time before our trip mapping out some of the sites we could get to, and our first stop was Twelve Mile Delta as Ithilien.  (For my LOTR friends-this was where Frodo, Sam & Gollum watched the battle between Faramir’s Rangers of Gondor and the men (& Oliphaunts) of Harad as well as where Sam cooked herbs and stewed rabbit for Frodo and they were captured by Boromir. This is also the background for Osgiliath.)

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We continued on our journey on the Glenorchy-Queenstown Road hugging Lake Wakatipu, stopping to take in the scenery.

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We continued north on the Glenorchy-Paradise Road and ran into a bunch of sheep just back from the sheerer. It was really cool watching the sheep being herded back to their paddock.

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We got out and took in the views all around us and traveled over to Lothlorian Woods on the road to Paradise. (beech forests of Middle Earth, inhabited by the Silvan elves) on the road to Paradise)

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We spent a little time in the village of Glenorchy where the kids ran around, played, and climbed the trees. From here you can see the north-western slopes of Mount Earnslaw, which featured in the opening sequence of The Two Towers.

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