|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
Day 14 Shire Reckoning: Sterday, Foreyule 18 -- Queenstown, Jet Boating, Horseback Riding - Farewell dinner. Up to an early start today to head to Dart River Safaris. Skipped Breakfast... We head on a 4x4 bus up the countryside parallel to the Dart river. New Zealand just gets more and more beautiful! We head down into a place called Paradise Valley. Wow! Just gorgeous. I didn't bring my camera because I thought that there'd be nothing to get pix of....silly me. Good thing Penny has her's. We get shots of the backgrounds used for the Isengard establishing shots, the Huorn tree line, and some Lothlorien establishing shots.
Then we hike a little over half a mile through the woods to the edge of the Dart River. The Beech forest here is just amazing. Everything about New Zealand is amazing.
Had a funny conversation about how Billy Zane wasn't such a bad guy in Titanic and how Kate Winslet was a strumpet....how do I always wind up being a defense attorney for film villains? Down onto the River Jet Boats....they are basically a gigantic water pump, but they can totally fly on the water. We hop in and are shooting across the Dart River within moments. Wow. They clouds are breaking too...and there we can see the Misty Mountains in the background....just stunning. (They are called the Barrier range or something for real. But we all know they are really the Misty Mountains.)
The Jet Boat ride is over too quickly and we grab a quick lunch of fish and chips...great stuff. Then Penny breaks off to go horseback riding and I'm heading back to the hotel. (There was a weight limit of 90 kilos for horseback stuff...I don't feel so bad, even when I was down to fighting weight and in really good shape I didn't weight 90 kilos. Guess I need a warhorse...lol)
Get back to the hotel and am thinking of meeting up with Laura and friends to head out on the town... Once I get back in the room, that's not going to happen. Crash hard. Wake up when Penny gets back. She had a great time riding but isn't used to the English saddle so her knees got chaffed a bit. Now we head up to the Hotel restaurant for our Farewell dinner. Phil (King Theoden in other pictures) gets up and does a perfect version of Bilbo's party speech. He was so good I half expected him to disappear at the end of it! Then the guides say their farewells and we were able to present them with some gifts for their hard work. Now for the tough part....the goodbyes. I can't help but think of Gimli's line at the end of FOTR, "So it has all been in vain, the Fellowship is broken." then Aragorn says, "Not if we look to each other" or something like that. Everyone is exchanging emails and stuff.
Have one last long talk with Jennifer Fallon, what an incredibly nice lady. She gives me more advice about writing and stuff...I can't wait to read her stuff, they are sold out of her books in Queenstown right now.
Everyone exchanges emails and URLs. But then the fellowship is parted. Kati sang a hauntingly beautiful song in Finnish. Just great. A few of us will meet for a late breakfast tomorrow, but for the most part, a long quest is at an end. :(
Back to the Muggle world tomorrow. The little voice inside my head sound like the little Rohan girl, Freida.... "I don't want to go." |
| ||
Day 15