Day 10 - A Remarkable Day
Today was our day in Glenorchy. It's a gorgeous area not too far from Queenstown, with the amazing Remarkables Mountain Range and the Dart River. Parts of the Lord of the Rings was filmed in this area.
We had a bit of an early morning, departing at 7:45 am. Since there were so many moving parts to this day (split by morning/afternoon and by which activity you'd signed up for) they gave us printed out copies of our personal itinerary for the day.
We headed out along the lake, with some beautiful views of the Remarkables as we rode along.
When we got to Glenorchy, we saw a quick glimpse of the famous Glenorchy red barn (more on this later), but our destination was the headquarters of Dart River Adventures. Half of the group went off to do the jetboats first, and then our group was split between those doing the horseback riding and those of us doing the jeep ride. I'd managed to zipline twice without messing up my back, and decided the better choice for my back at this point was to do the jeep tour. The jeeps were parked outside of Dart River Adventures, and we split into 2 jeeps that held 6 people plus the driver.
@distravel and her husband were in the same jeep as I.
I had spoken to both the Vacationistas and Kira & Nettie about my unfortunate tendency towards car/sea sickness, and had asked to get a seat up front in the jeep to minimize the car sickness. Which I got. But just before we left, Kira came up to the window, looking very reluctant, and told me that another person in the group had just told her that *she* had issues, and needed to sit up front. She asked me if I could switch with the other woman part way through the trip. I really was reluctant to not sit in the front, but what could I do? So I agreed to it.
We headed out of town along a well-paved road, with the gorgeous Remarkables lining the roadway. Once again, we had a spectacular day, with blue skies and just a few puffy white clouds hugging the mountain tops. Our jeep driver, who was in contact with the other jeep driver, would point out points of interest along the way.
We made our first quick stop for the jeep drivers to point out a few vistas that were used in the filming of The Lord of the Rings. I believe we passed the area where Isengard was filmed, and a few others. They had notebooks with photos from the movies that we could match up to what we were seeing.
We really just stepped out of the jeep for a few minutes to look at the photos they had and to take our own photos. We were only less than 20 minutes into the drive at that point, so I agreed with the other woman that we'd switch at the next stop.
It was all just gorgeous! Seriously gorgeous! Photos don't do it justice!
As we drove a bit more, the road became a bit rougher (but still nothing I'd consider "off-road").
But then we did get to a rocky, bumpy area, where we had to cross some small streams.
Continued in next post.