We picked a good day for our Lord of the Rings (LOTR) tour of Edoras (The Golden Hall for the Riders of Rohan). We drove to Mt Somers to meet the 6-wheel drive van – it arrived about an hour late since they had multiple pickups in the city. We finally left a little after noon, 14 tourists and our driver/guide (Andy). The drive up to Edoras took about an hour, the first half on sealed ashphalt and the second half on gravel. The final 5 km or so was pretty rough and required an SUV or similar vehicle to negotiate the river crossing (it would be impassable if there was any appreciable rain). There were a couple of tour buses with cruise ship tourists on a shorter tour than what we had.
We moved past the parked buses and drove up closer to Mt Sunday (after passing through a locked gate – regular tourists have to park outside the gate and walk in another 500 m or so). We crossed a couple of streams before climbing the steep slopes of Mt Sunday. Anna made it all the way to the top ... it just took her a bit longer with several stops to catch her breath. But she's definitely in better shape than when we arrived in NZ – back then, she wouldn't have even attempted this hike. We had great views of the movie sites (The Golden Hall, the route that Aragorn/Gandalf/Gimli/Legolas took on their way to see Theodin, the exterior shots for Helms Deep). Andy said the Edoras tour grew from an alpine tour that went past Mt Sunday. After the LOTR movies were released, most of the alpine tourists wanted to stop at Mt Sunday, so the tour company changed their focus and advertising accordingly. Movie props (swords, Gimli's axe, Rohan flag) were provided for photo ops. After spending more than an hour on the site, we drove back to Clearwater Lake and ate lunch.
There was another US couple on the tour – they hailed from Seattle. They had quite an adventure coming to NZ. They used airline miles to pay for most of their trip, which required them to fly through Honolulu and Fiji. They had maintenance delays at both stopovers, which cost them about 5 days of vacation in NZ plus some non-refundable hotel and rental car charges. The husband said he was a meticulous planner, but enlisted the aid of a travel agent for this trip (as it was made at the last minute since his boss didn't approve his vacation right away). I guess we take a lot of our planning for granted as we have learned many shortcuts over the years to make sure we are comfortable and can really relax during our vacations ... and now our retirement.
