Instead of being boring and exploring more of The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe, we have decided to move on to more new and exciting things.  Quite recently an exciting film was released for your viewing pleaser.  This long awaited film went by the name of Prince Caspian.  Please, proceed free of charge.

            Our explorers found it necessary to rise early to be able to view today’s location.  They rose and quickly headed off in the direction of a long sought over and mysterious land.  It, like previous places, was also too mysterious for the public eye for many moons (*cough* more money disputes *cough*).

            But lucky for our explorers, the sight was open.  They headed up a gravel road and into an already inhabited car park.  They wasted no time in setting out down the 15 minute gravel path (where they encountered a strange man in an orange jacket demanding $11 dollars to pass by) and then across the 10 minute path across the path and to the Cathedral Caves.

            Our explorers soon learned that the caves extended much farther then anticipated and seeing as they had only two hours available, they could not see them all.  To inform you.  The Cathedral Caves are only open for 8 hours of the day in two four hour intervals.  The Caves can only be accessed at low tide and two hours before and after.  The tides move two hours everyday, but our explorers could not wait for a more opportune low tide time.  The time of the low tide on this day was 8:20.  Our explorers arrived at about that time, so only had two hours.

            The first cave they explored had been heavily explored.  It was almost completely dry and of course the ground was completely doused in sand.  The first cave came to a sudden end before veering sharply to the right.  This small side tunnel lead into the back of the second cave, which was fairly similar to the first.

            After this amazing excursion of the caves, our explorers ventured into deeper and more dangerous territory.  To reach this place, they were forced to wade in ankle deep sea water for many yards.

            After this, a plethora of caves was laid out in front of them.  Alas, they were not as easy viewing as the previous caves.  Our explorers were unequipped with a flashlight and had only meager light from the red focusing light of a camera.  One of the caves they began to explore was waterlogged for several feet before it returned to dry ground.

            Another was thin, growing thinner and thinner before expanding into a wide cavern.  Others twisted and turned.  One extended deep into the mountain.  And one was like a great entrance, extending what seemed like a mile above our explorer’s heads.  This great entrance lead into three small caves.  One was a neat rectangle, extending only a couple feet.  The ground was littered in seaweed.  Another was a perfect square, also extending a couple feet.  This one was short and would have forced our explorers to bend over if they had ventured inside.  The third cave was somewhat to the side.  It was too thin to be explored, but careful examination revealed it was also shallow.

            At this point an hour had passed, so our explorers decided to return, as their feet were getting cold.  They made their way back to the perilous water crossing only to find it had risen several inches.  They quickly splashed back through the water, zig-zagging back and forth to reach the shallowest areas and avoid the crashing waves.

            The explorers all agreed heartily that the land of Narnia was truly an amazing place, but they unfortunately had to leave it.  So they returned to the caves they had first ventured into and made their way back through it until they came out onto the beach, dotted in tourists.  Then, only shaking a little from the cold, they returned back along the beach and up the rocky trail.

            For those who are curious and wish to know what section of the movie our explorers saw, please read on.  The movie is entitled Prince Caspian.  Search out the kings and queens of old’s entrance into Narnia for the second time.  They are seated on a bench in a train station.  Lucy cries out, claiming that someone pinched her.  Peter says that no one has touched her.

            But as a train whistles by, the walls around them begin to fall away.  And not long afterwards they find themselves in the mouth of an enormous cave, known to the world of the living as Cathedral Caves.  The four then, crying out in joy, rush into the water, which we now imagine must have been freezing.

            Soon afterwards Edmond spies a ruin up atop a hillside.  Our explorers searched and searched, but in the end searched in vain for such a castle.  But one could imagine the rolling green hills and crystal blue water that inhabited this space on those rare sunny days that strike only once a year in the cloudy and dreary sight our explorers adventured through.

            We appreciate your continued support to The Alternative Adventures of Narnia and likewise announced to you by The Voice of Aslan.  Please continue to listen closely for the mighty roar in the background proclaiming the return of this program.

            Let’s go back in time, back to Christchurch.  On the boarder lies a mysterious land of snow and ice.  This pass only becomes passable when the snow and ice lifts.  It then allows the quaint village at the center of the pass to rest in peace.  But travel deep into this lands, past hills and mountains, ice and snow to a land so mysterious that for many moons it was closed to the public (*cough* money and ownership dispute *cough*).

            In this very mysterious land rocks are scattered about as if tossed by a great hand.  A rocky (*cough* painful) path winds its way over the grassy hills, over rivers and near these rocks.  It also descends to a cave roaring with a river, which carves its way from one end of the cave to another.

            Many adventuresome travelers have wandered into these caves, some to never return again.  A group of our explorers investigated this cave, although dared not to go in too far.  What they saw bordered frightening.  To enter the cave farther then a couple steps one must either step into the rushing current of the river and be swept down a narrow waterfall, which continues on as a wide and cold creek or step across onto a slipper ledge of rock no wider then the length of a foot, edge across the slippery rock and climb down a crumbling ladder into the rushing current.

            However, despite how fascination this cave was, our explorers had to return to the land above and search out Narnia.  Narnia was found hidden among the rocks described above.  If one will recall the film The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to mind.  Nearing the end, a mighty battle was fought between the white witch and the to-be kings and queens of old (Peter, Susan, Edmond and Lucy).  They battle progresses to rocky landscape, where Edmond and later Peter fight the white witch hand to hand.  It is also where Aslan eventually kills the white witch.

            The location of this battle is now what our explorers gazed upon.  Unfortunately, our explorers could not enter the sacred place and find exact places, but it is no matter.  Our explorers searched around more and stopped to meditate at the intersection of several paths, but eventually finding no more to occupy them, left and headed onward to our next location.

            Thank for listening to The Alternative Adventures of Narnia and likewise announced to you by The Voice of Aslan’s first program.  We will soon return.

This is a warning from MEE!!! and company.  A strange and alien life form has invaded this space.  Be on the lookout for a dangerous radio announcer going by the name of The Voice of Aslan.  We will apprehend this criminal as soon as possible.  Until then, Be Warned.

            So you’re just driving along, minding your own business, when whamo, you’re suddenly driving through a long, dark, scary tunnel.  Well whose idea was that?  Probably the people who didn’t feel like driving over the mountain.  So they just bulldozed right through the center.  Nice.

            Milford sound, is a sound.  Actually, it’s the sound.  A sound is a fiord.  A fiord is an inlet of water from the ocean, that penetrates into land like a mile or something.  Sandflies.  Cruise.  Yeah, it wasn’t that interesting, but I thought I should at least tell you about it.

            Once we got out to sea there was a lot of nauseating rocking.  Before that, we boated up to a bunch of seals and waterfalls (got drenched by one).  It also rained.  So, the cliff edges are like steep.  As in vertical steep.  And then continues on (steeply) down into the water.  So boats can get really close to shore.

            We stopped off at an underwater observatory (as in, we got off and the boat left…don’t worry.  Someone else came to pick us up.)  So there was lots of orange sponge, white coral (called black coral) and fish.  I couldn’t stare at it for too long because the glass was slightly distorted and it made me nauseous.

            Yeah, that’s it.  But as to yesterday’s comment of Milford Sound not meeting Lord of the Rings standards.  Someone thought that the Argonath (refer to previous entries) was filmed here.  But the walls were not that tall.  No way.

            So we’ve got some catching up to do.  Where did we leave off?  After Milford Sound we decided (no one’s quite sure why.  Just kidding) to go to Steward Island, which is a small island off the southern tip of the South Island.  Basically, to get any closer to Antarctica, you’d have to be in the ocean.

            Mostly we wandered (at least for the first and last two days).  There were a couple short walks (with lots of stairs…yeah), mostly leading to the beaches.  Stewart Island is a reserve for birds, so you can’t get to three fourths of the island (there are tours where you were boated out to parts of the island to see kiwis and other birds.  Kiwis, just to let you know, are small, brown, flightless birds that are endangered.  There is also a tour to Ulva island, which is completely a bird reserve).  And I should mention Stewart Island has about 300 residents total.

            On the third day we were boated out to a hut, called Freshwater hut.  We stayed there for two nights (hoping for a Kiwi sighting, but in vain).  We hiked part way to Mason Bay one day and encountered the enchanting bird once again (refer to previous journal entries).  The enchanting bird enchanted me once before, although I was able to break away from its spell.

            I was more prepared this time.  I have learned the small, curious blue bird is in fact a robin and it likes to hang around travelers because they disturb the ground (they then search for bugs and worms).  This enchanting bird was much more curious then the previous (did I mention that we also ran into an enchanting bird on the Kepler?  We gave it some crackers).  It climbed up onto our shoes, pecking at our shoelaces and gators (devices that go over the shoe and pants to keep out rain and mud).  Perhaps we were all swayed and slightly enchanted by the bird for a time, but our goal lay ahead of us.

            We bounded across the enchanter’s lair (a large break in the path about four feet across and covered in a thin coating of mud and water) and continued our journey to the broken and repaired bridges, more mud and…mostly more mud.  It was a muddy trail (as in up to your thighs muddy)

            After those two days, we returned to the town of Oban (Stewart Island’s only town) on a much less bumpy ride.  The first ride consisted of yard tall waves.  We stayed at a quite little house about a mile from town and spent much of the two days there trying to accomplish an impossible puzzle.  Unfortunately, we didn’t finish it.

            That was all the excitement of Stewart Island (except for the Kakas I got to feed).  After that we headed up to the Caitlins (southern part of the South Island).  Yet again, we have spent our days lounging, taking short walks and sitting on the beach.

The Land of the Purple Hills

(aka, lupine.  You know, it’s a flower)

            How can I describe the Kepler track?  And where should I begin?  The rain, the cliffs, the mountains (aka, the ups and downs), the wind, the huts, the long hours of hiking…?

            Brief outline:

            Day 1: leave car at parking lot-walk to boat dock-take ‘water taxi’ across lake (this cut off 2 hr 30 min from our hike)-walk up really steep hill for like five hours-walk above bush line (basically all the trees suddenly disappear and get replaced by scrub and sun)-get to hut [Luxmore] and laze around.

(Our forms of entertainment basically consisted of what we could come up with, our book [Midnighters: Blue Noon] and Quidditch.  Incase you’re wondering, no, we didn’t have broomsticks.  It’s a card game.  So, we also played 20 Questions, Guess my four letter word, Guess my word based off of one word hints [whatever] and the question game)

            Day 2: laze around hut for a day (and go over to the cave, which was dark and small and if you wanted to see the whole thing you had to crawl through small spaces…scary)

            Day 3: Hike to next hut [Iris Burn]-go up steep hill for about an hour-go up and down hills for another hour-stop at emergency shelter [for really bad weather] and rest-walk for two mores to next emergency shelter and eat a brief lunch-hike for three hours done very painful slope-get to hut and collapse…and it was raining.  And windy.  And foggy.

(Our food supply was sort of on the worrisome side, at first.  In the end, it turned out we did have enough food, but some of us were questioning that.  The thing was, however, that even though we had food, it wasn’t necessarily good food.  I mean, it was good food, but our options were getting really slim.  Crackers almost gone.  A lot of the dried fruit gone.  It probably helped that at some point we went and rationed the food for each day.)

            Day 4: laze around hut for a day and recover (headed out to the waterfall, which was really cool, but we couldn’t stay long because of the horrid sand flies [bit like mosquitoes].  We also went to a river and hung out there for a while)

            Day 5: Hike to next hut [M]-nice flat walk basically-pass the Great Slip of 18 [rock avalanche, wiped out half the path]-get to hut very easily-sit on the beach for a while and read

            Day 6: Hike out-yet again, very flat-however, ends in a rough, rocky, hot, unshaded by trees path that was not fun.  I wasn’t wearing shoes, so my feet were seriously burned by the experience.

            Little note on day 3.  I stayed up late that night writing and there was a very large group of Italians (I believe).  I’m fairly certain they were from different groups, but still all spoke Italian, fancy that.  But they started singing, which was kind of cool.

            Something about bunks.  So, we’re not camping, but we’re not in a hotel or anything.  Thin mattress and you’re sleeping bag.  And other people in the room (on this trip at least 10 or 20 other people) moving and snoring etc. sigh.

            Something about culture.  In the US, everyone speaks English.  In New Zealand, everyone speaks English.  The difference is that in NZ, when they’re talking to each other (which we saw a lot of on this hike), they speak their own language.  It was so weird to walk into a room stuffed with talking people and be able to say, “I have no idea what anyone’s saying.  Although, it’s accepted that if you talk to someone else, you begin at least by talking in English.  Because everyone speak English.

            That’s mostly it for the Kepler, but for you die-heart Lord of the Rings fans, there is a brief program by MEE!!! and company.

            Welcome to the unexpected revival of The Quest for New Zealand’s Lord of the Rings by MEE!!!

            There’s unfortunately very little to tell.  On the Kepler track (day 6) there was an overhead shot filmed.  This was the shot for the swamp Frodo, Sam and Gollum make their way across to avoid the orc traveling on the main road.  For exact instructions to the scene, please continue: The Two Towers…

            So, we hiked through the swamp, so I can’t be positive about this, but I think there was some digital effects to that scene.  I’m not sure the swamp was truly that big and there was a lot of random bits of forest and a large lake getting in the way of the swampyness, so what did they do with those?  Maybe they just left them in because that brings me to the third point, which is that it was not that foggy.  They could have just gotten it on a foggy day, but I doubt it.

            As for the scenes actually in the swamp.  That was not here.  If you tried to walk anywhere in the swamp, you’d sink up to your knees at least.  That is, if you didn’t drown.  Those scenes, if my sources are correct, were filmed in the parking lot outside the filming studio in Wellington.  Yeah, whatever.

            Thank you for listening to this final program of The Quest for New Zealand’s Lord of the Rings by MEE!!!  Stay tuned for tomorrow’s episode on Milford Sound and its inability to meet the Lord of the Rings standards, despite what some people of the company thought.  Thank you and good evening.

            We saw two scenes today (exceeding my expectations).  And I am very happy to say that we were able to pinpoint exact locations.  So, shall we begin?  Beginning was rough (after the highway that is).  We had drive for about 39 km (about 19.5 miles) down a very dusty and gravely road.  Yeah.  But, we were rewarded.

            Two Towers, first disc, The Fate of Merry and Pippin.  Are you hipped?  Didn’t think so.  Ew, nasty start to that scene.  So, the trio rides up the hill on horseback to discover a pile of burning orc bodies.  They despair as they realize they have failed Merry and Pippin.  Gimil says, “We’ve failed them.” And Legolas starts murmuring something in Elvish.  But, you should actually return to the start of that scene.  And then rewind a couple seconds.

            You will see the back of the horses as they near the smoke and Fangorn forest.  So, that’s a hill at the edge of a forest.  If you were to bake that camera up several feet, you would encounter a fence followed by a road…and then another fence.  Our directions prompted us to jump the fence, but we (sadly) decided against it.

            Anyway.  We continued on the road, driving several more miles.  As we moved forward on the road, we moved back in time, back to the first movie and the breaking of the fellowship.

            Go figure, the scene (Fellowship of the Ring, second disc) is called The Breaking of the Fellowship.  The scene opens to Aragorn confronting a plethora of orcs.  Fastforward until you encounter Frodo (he’ll be falling over a tree root).  Keep going past the cutscene to Aragorn.  Frodo then regains his footing and quickly crawls behind a tree (cut scene to Aragorn…).  Pause as you return to Frodo cowering behind the tree as orcs run by.

            The rock in the bottom left hand corner of the screen was added, who knows why.  Yeah…well, we found that exact spot, which was really cool.  Keep watching.  The scene will switch to Merry and Pippin, as they peer out from between two roots.  Merry calls out, “Frodo.”  Pippin says, “Hide here, quick.”

            Well.  We also found those trees.  That was so cool because we were staring at this one fallen tree and I looking at the angle of its dissent and I realized that if this was the right tree, then the spot Merry and Pippin hid had to be on the other side.  And when I saw it (despite the lack of little trees that you see surrounding Merry and Pippin) I knew it had to be the spot.  I was worried that the trees might have been built in and then taken out, but they weren’t.

            There was also a perfect hallow between the trees, which I suspect was dug out somewhat.  The two trees have also rotted away a little bit, losing some of their former greenness to browns.  I also believe that the trees around Merry and Pippin were added for the scene, before being taken out.

            And one more thing about that spot.  It’s not right across the path from Frodo.  It was like way over somewhere else.  Hm…if you continue on to Boromir’s death scene you will see a hoard of orcs and one uruk-hai making their way down a steep incline toward Boromir.  I’m fairly certain that was the same slope Frodo fell down as he made his way to the tree he then hid behind.

            But wait, we’re not done yet.  Fastforward until Boromir dies and the scene changed to Frodo standing at the edge of the lake.  When the scene first changes, a large tree is overhanging the rocky beach.  We are fairly certain that we found that, although not positive.  The scene changes to a front shot of Frodo.  Is that in the same place?  I don’t know.

            Continue until Frodo hops into the boat and Sam bursts from the forest.  Same place?  Don’t know.  However, Sam then makes his way into the river (which I might add was more green and brown then blue).  The lake starts out as a shelf for several feet, getting slowly deeper.  It then drops, suddenly, into an emerald green pool that would be way over my head.  I might add that in one take, as Sam struggled through the water, he got a really nasty cut on his foot and then had to helicopter him out to a hospital.

            Anyway.  The scene of Sam struggling in vain to swim and ‘nearly’ drowning was done a stage, a dry stage if I’m correct.  They just blasted him with a lot of wind and added bubbles later.  So.  Frodo continues on to save Sam’s life, pulling him into the boat.  I wonder how many times it flipped before they decided to anchor the boat down.

            And then the whole scene where they are sitting in the boat talking (Sam: “I made a promise Mr. Frodo.  A promise: ‘Don’t you leave him Samwise Gamgee.’  And I don’t mean to.  I don’t mean to.)  The boat was anchored there too.  Although the lake (river?) wasn’t moving too fast, it was moving fast enough that the boat would have been moving as they talked.

            And I might add that the lake was obviously not moving that fast, as they were able to move with those ridiculous paddles.  Yes, very decorative, but they must have been big and bulky and just not good for paddling.

            The eastern shore they then cross to is actually in the same area.  They did really paddle from that shore they were just on, to the other shore (even though what they claim is the eastern shore is in fact the western shore).  When they do finally reach the eastern shore you see a shot of them walking up a hill.  Is that hill actually on the eastern shore we saw?  Who knows.

            For some more trivia, keep watching until Boromir’s and his boat tumble over the edge of the waterfall (yes, the boat was animated).  Legolas then shouts, “Hurry!  Frodo and Sam have reached the eastern shore.”  Pause the movie as he begins talking.

            Okay.  We’ve got some trees and some shore line and lake.  And then there’s this huge rock diving the water (which then cascades down a waterfall).  Yeah.  Rock+waterfall=digital effects.  Aka, it certainly wasn’t at that lake in the first place.

            You’re nearly at the end of the movie, and with the end of this movie comes the end of this program.  But as Sam points out after Frodo says, “I don’t suppose we’ll ever see [the others] again.”

            “We may yet.”

            Perhaps tomorrow will hold more surprises, even if there is no more Lord of the Rings sights to my knowledge.  But then again.  You never know.

            This ends The Quest for New Zealand’s Lord of the Rings by MEE!!!  Special thanks to the photographer(s), the person who organized and chose the photos for this entries and the person who lined our actor up to match the actors in the Lord of the Rings scenes.  We thank you warmly and bid you farewell.  At least until tomorrow.

            Today’s expectations, unfortunately, fell short.  We only managed to make it to one of the sights we had planned, but our fingers are crossed that we can make it tomorrow.  This scene, I think, was also a little disappointing.  Firstly, when I looked at the film I was sure we would have little trouble finding the correct spot.  This turned out wrong, as we never did find the exact location.  Also, it was blisteringly hot, which has a tendency to inflict headaches and drowsiness upon people.

            But let’s find this scene, shall we?  Two Towers.  First disc.  Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbits.  Basically, start it and then pause immediately.  Gollum comes galloping in with a batch of rabbits, or ‘coonies’

            The area where this was filmed was a large rocky expanse, dotted in trees and scrub.  The scrub was easy enough to find, as well as the ground (it looks a little bit like sand, but it’s actually lichen that completely covers the ground).  But finding that white beech tree was hard, let alone two right next to each other.  Also, note the mountains in the background.  The tops have been chopped off.

            There was a lot of walking up and down this one path, trying to find the right spot.  And that was followed by river crossings (some of us claimed not to get wet…right).  So, follow this scene onwards.  The rabbits get cooked (by Sam) and then Frodo heads off into the forest after hearing a strange noise.  We flash to a scene of Frodo walking through the forest after Sam says to Gollum, “You’re hopeless.”

            I don’t know if the forest Frodo was walking through was at our location.  However, Sam will soon follow after Frodo, into the forest and to a cliff edge.  Yet again, we knew the cliff was somewhere, but we were even less clear about that location.  There was a rocky ledge we saw, but look at them on that cliff edge.  Dirt, needles.  Not rocks.  There was another, much higher, cliff we passed by.  Maybe that was it.  Who knows?

            This concludes today’s short of The Quest for New Zealand’s Lord of the Rings by MEE!!!  MEE!!! and company thanks you for your attention.  Goodnight.

            Today was another day of many sights.  But unlike yesterday, all of today’s sights were in the same location.  Sort of.  Today featured in Deer Park, a once almost vacant park turned milling ground for tourists by the Lord of the Rings movies.  Although we didn’t see many today.  Come on, it’s a Sunday.

            Deer Park, unlike previous assumptions, is not a flat, beautiful field dotted in trees and bristling with little animals.  Scratch the words ‘flat’ and ‘little’ and you’ve basically got it covered.  Actually, it might help if you interchange ‘flat’ with ‘insanely steep and scary.’

            But that’s not what we care about, is it?  We want to know about Lord of the Rings.  Okay, I’m just going to start abbreviating that.  So, sight number one.  You guessed it, your going to need you DVD or VHS (that is if they made LOTR on VHS, I’m not sure).   The Two Towers if you please.  First disc.

            The scene’s toward the end of the first disc and it’s called Exodus from Edoras.  Fastforward to Wormtongue’s little spiel.  Something like, “They will flee to Helm’s Deep.”  Then you see a bunch of people walking along the edge of a lake.  This lake is actually pretty small.  Like 10ish ft by 30ish ft.  This area is on top of hill, not the flat area it seems to be.

            Continue on to the second disc.  It’s the first scene, “Dwarf Women.”  Here people are walking along another lake, much smaller this one.  Gimli is saying, “It’s true you don’t see many dwarf women.”  You’ll note the mountains here are different.  Deer Park is completely surrounded by mountains (way off in the distance).  But all the mountains look different, so you could make it look like you’re in like four or five different locations.

            The scene continues.  Then it flips to the people camped out at a *gasp* lake.  This is in fact the same lake they were just walking past (during Gimli’s spiel)…or maybe t was the lake they were walking past during Wormtongue’s spiel.  Um…

            Next scene!  Scene: The Wolves of Isengard.  We’re going to skip around a bit.  Two knights on horseback ride away from the group.  One of the horses freaks when they ride alongside a stone wall.  One knight comments, “What is it?  Hama?”  Hama replies, “I’m not sure.”  The camera slides up the wall where a Wolf of Isengard is waiting to pounce.

            This scene was filmed in the area of the park containing deer.  Therefore, the park was none too happy about either people bothering the deer or deer bothering (ehm, injuring) the people.  So the cage is locked and the sign that originally pointed to the spot has been torn down (the post’s still there though).  Did I mention there were sign posts everywhere that said LOTR 120 m (or whatever)?  Anyway, we kind of peered around the fence at this scene, but couldn’t actually get to it.

            Move forward to the clash between wolves and men.  Actually, go back a little bit to Legolas shooting his first arrow at the wolves (the horses then ride up behind him).  Interestingly steep hill that couldn’t have been fun to ride (on horseback) up.  Keep going.  Clash.  Bang.  Ouch.  Pain.

            Long scene here.  This all happened in a very small area.  It was also a bit valley like because it was a steep hill leading down to this tiny strip of flat area, followed by a slight up inclined to the cliff Aragorn latter falls off.  Feel free to watch the whole scene with all the interesting scenery.

            But, at least get to Aragorn falling off the cliff at the end of this scene.  So, just as he’s falling off the cliff.  Look out and tell me what you see.  A river in the distance.  Green fields.  Mountains (we’re currently having an argument as to whether or not that was all digitally imposed.  I argue that there was city down there).  So, continue on to Gimli and Legolas realizing Aragorn is probably dead.  They’ll both call out his name, talk to a dying orc and then walk to the cliff’s edge.  Now look and tell me what you see.

            A river at the bottom of a chasm.  I kind of missed that chasm in that first scene.  But anyway.  That cliff Legolas is looking over, isn’t really a cliff.  It’s like a three foot drop.  Yeah, onto rocks, but it wouldn’t kill you.

            Two more quick things.  First of all.  The lake I mentioned previously (the one during Wormtongue’s spiel).  In the third movie, Gandalf and Pippin ride through that lakeish thing on their way to Gondor (Third movie, first disc, scene: Minas Tirith.  Gallop over hills, gallop through forest, gallop through river.  Yeah, that was it).  Incase you haven’t noticed yet, that lake is used a lot.

            And finally.  We didn’t get to see this, but we know it was around there somewhere.  Very end of The Return of the King first disc.  The Siege of Gondor.  Rewind to the trio (Legolas, Aragorn and Gimli) leaving the Paths of the Dead.  The exit wall to the Paths of the Dead was around there somewhere (they leave spooky underground area, you see wall, Aragorn sees ships headed to Gondor and despairs).  If you don’t know, Paths of the Dead is where all the ghosts are hanging out.  Aragorn goes to recruit them.

            I’m afraid it was all very confusing.  But those first couple scenes were really cool because you could definitely see them.  The rocks in the background.  The lake/swamp.  The tufts of grass.  The other tourists…

            Thank you for listening to another episode of The Quest for New Zealand’s Lord of the Rings by MEE!!!  We apologize for any confusing in this article dealing with location of or description of scenes.  Any questions will be readily answered.  Stay tuned for tomorrow’s episode dealing with lands far and near.  We thank you, and goodnight.

            Yeah, okay.  I don’t know who wrote that introduction, but I’m not so sure about that whole ‘visiting’ thing.  We either saw it way off in the distance or really had no idea where it was (somewhere in the next mile).  Anyway.

            Just to save the suspense, we spent the majority of the day driving in the rain (and then the snow and then the rain…).  And mostly we saw mountains.  Lots of mountains.  Well, might as well turn (perhaps wearily) back to our TV or computer screens and the DVD therein.  Today we will be ranging over most of the movies, so let’s get started.

            Here’s a list of mountains we kind of passed and maybe saw.  Ehm.  First of all.  Very beginning of The Two Towers.  A little iffy on this one.  So, opening scene.  Snowy mountains.  Sun.  Keep going.  Gandalf (overvoice) shouts, “You can not pass!” Frodo replies, “Gandalf!”  And the scene switches to new mountains.  Much more snow.  Gandalf talking (can’t really understand him).  Watch carefully.  A bit of the mountain straight ahead should be flashing.  The scene’s going to change again in a second, but pause before it does.  I think this is one of the mountains we drove by.

            Second.  Flip to your DVD menu.  The scene is The King of the Golden Hall.  Start the scene and STOP!  Backdrop.  We saw those mountains.  Yeah.

            Third.  Back up to my previous journal entry and get directions to the lighting of the beacons scene.  We saw a couple more of those.

            Onto something a little more exciting.  Argonath.  Yeah, I know.  Fellowship of the Ring, second disc (for those extended edition people).  Scene called: Parth Galen.  Rewind.  The Argonath are those huge stone king figures that were digitally imposed into the mountain.  If you’re having trouble identifying exactly what I’m talking about (although it should be fairly obvious), Aragorn says, “Long have I desired to look upon the kings of old.  My kin.”  And a couple seconds later you get this nice long shot of cliff, (really) blue water, boats, huge stone things.

            To get to that spot, we got to drive on a really fun mountain road, partly through the snow.  The scene location had something to do with a vineyard and a bungee jumping company.  We weren’t positive about where on the river the scene was actually filmed, but it was obviously there somewhere.  Did I mention it was raining (aka we wanted to keep moving and not spend forever freezing).

            Next.  Same movie, but first disc.  Head to Rivendell and then rewind back to Arwen ferrying Frodo (on a horse) across a ford/river.  The Nazgul are just coming out of a forest.  So.  White horse runs into river with black horses coming in behind.  We go to long shot with large river and many horses.  Got it?  If you get to a quick shot of Arwen’s face, you’ve gone like two seconds too far.  And if she starts talking, you’ve definitely gone too far.

            So, another scene we’re very iffy on.  The river has been cut in half but a hill of rocks, so it’s now much deeper, faster and smaller.  We were also there in the summer (lots of lupines, bushy trees etc.) instead of fall…or winter…or something.  This shot mainly consists of pine trees.  We unfortunately, were unable to find pine trees.  So, like the previous scene, it was obviously here somewhere, but we couldn’t really say, “That’s it.”

            Okay.  Coming to our final destination of the day (other then our hostile.  We won’t talk about that, it’s too scary…not the hostel, the hill that got us to the hostel).  Very beginning of first movie.  Just fast forward.  Getting rings…Elf talking…battle scene…’death’ of Sauron … Isildur gets ring.  Stop.  Isildur will now ride through a forest (aren’t those trees awesome?).  Galadriel will say, “and the ring of power has a will of its own.” After that, things get fuzzy.  Orcs attack.  Okay.  They attack for a while.  That battle scene was probably filmed in several different locations.  We might have passed by them.  The only thing I’m sure about is a couple seconds later.

            I need to go to sleep…Ehm, sorry.  Isildur puts on the ring, jumps in the river, losses the ring…and, why do you keep missing the scene?  The scene switches to a bunch of orcs firing bows.  We were there.  Yeah.  So, let me explain what you’re seeing.  Starting from the top.  Sky between two trees.  If you were to walk between those trees, you would encounter a green field.  And then a town.  But avert your eyes an inchish down from the top of the screen.  There is a path running along the upper quarter of the screen.  Now look down at the orcs in the foreground (so, that was one hill from the top to the path and then another hill from the path to the riverbed).  The orcs are firing into a shallow (very swift) and probably empty river.  The river Isildur was in, was somewhere else.

            I’d also like to point out this scene had some serious greys added.  I mean, that place was green when we were there.

            The Quest for New Zealand’s Lord of the Rings by MEE!!! will return tomorrow, exploring new and uncharted territory.  We will bid you goodbye before our narrator drops to the floor of exhaustion.

            So, I’m sure you’re all wondering right now, what is Franz Josef?  (yes, yes?)  Well, Franz Josef is a Glacier (except not with a capital G).  And unlike my first (random and highly mistaken) sort of thought of what the glacier looked like, it was white. (Let me explain.  I was thinking the glacier would be a totally transparent, beautiful light blue.  I couldn’t tell you why).  So the glacier was very white, opaque.  Yeah, there was some light blue and then this weird pool-water blue.

            But…before I get too far ahead of myself, let me explain some more.  Turn to your DVD (by the way, if you’re still reading this and don’t have a DVD, I have to ask myself why I keep adding this section).  The Return of the King, second disc.  The scene is called The Lighting of the Beacons.  Start it up.  And you might as well watch from the start.  It’s pretty obvious when the beacons start getting lit.  But if you’re still confused.  After Pippin lights the first beacon, wait a bit and Gandalf will say, “Hope is kindled.”  Wahla.

            This scene consists of a lot of dramatic music and beacons being lit.  Incase you haven’t guessed, Franz Josef is where one of those beacons was lit.  Feel free to watch all fourteen beacons being lit.  Then go back and watch it all in slow motion.

            Beacon 1) (lit by Pippin) Obviously not lit on the glacier.  I mean really.

            Beacon 2) Out on a mountain range.  The valley is filled with a lot of weird up and down formations that kind of look like canyons.  Probably not the glacier, consider that the glacier was basically surrounded (all around) by other mountains.  It wasn’t in a long, thin, perfect line like the movie’s mountain range.

            Beacon 3) (did I mention that the beacon wasn’t actually lit on Josef?  It was lit on a neighboring mountain.)  Out in a bunch mountains.  Probably not the sight.  Too many mountains, not enough forest and no glacier in sight.

            Beacon 4 and 5) (you can see them both in the same scene.  Just watch the first one be lit and then have some patience and wait for the second one to be lit.)  Two mountain ranges separated by a bank of clouds.  Probably not.  Too high.  The glacier was only just getting into the clouds, let alone above them.

            Beacon 6) Really perfect snowy white mountain.  Pointy, one tall mountain.  No.  I really don’t think so.

            Beacon 7 and 8 ) Awesome scene.  I love the night shot.  Two scraggily mountains with…something in between them.  Eh, could be.  It’s certainly got the valley between them.  I don’t know if the shape is right…then again I can’t judge because I never actually saw the mountain…I did mention that, right?

            Beacon 9 and 10) Mountains.  Wiendy valley.  Another mountain.  Probably not.  The valley is just way to wiendy.

            Beacon 11 and 12) Lots of tall pointy mountains.  And there are just way too many of them.

            Beacon 13) Little stumpy thing pointing out of the clouds (and another hunk of mountain blocking the screen…nah

            Beacon 14) Final beacon, seen by Aragorn, who then goes and tells king Theoden, blah, blah, blah.  The beacon.  Mountains.  Snow.  Weird angles.  I highly doubt it.  I’m pretty sure the mountain we were looking at was an individual type mountain, not in any obvious range.

            So, what does this all add up to?  Which of these fourteen beacons did we see (what’s the lucky number?)  And the answer is, I don’t know.  Yeah, I’ve got my theories.  I’ve got my suspicious, but to be truly honest, I don’t know.

            Well, I hope you enjoyed my blurb on Lord of the Rings.  But, before I end this episode, I’m going to tell you a little bit about Franz Josef Glacier (only without the capital G).

            Just over a hundred years ago (105 if you want to be exact…soon to be 106 I suppose), there were two brothers.  Shocker there.  And these two brothers found this really awesome glacier (guess what’s it called) and decided it would be a great business if they could take groups up the glacier.

            And thus, by that misfortunate event, the Franz Josef guided tours began.  And I got pulled along on it somehow.  It was cold.  There was ice.  There was snow.  It was raining (hard) and our guide had this thing about never stopping.

            I’m probably not the best person to tell you about this because I was not awed by the 8 billion (give or take a billion) tons of ice.  Or the rocks that someone tried to thrown on our heads.  Just kidding.  No, that was someone moving rocks that might have otherwise fallen on our heads.

            Nor was I impressed by the long crevices (crevasses?) that were so tight that you had to do a sort of shuffle because you couldn’t slide one foot past the other.  Or the could be death defyingly steep steps up the glacier’s side.  Or the tons of rock that had been pushed down the glacier by…let me start a new sentence before I try to explain this.  A bunch of ice at the top of the glacier collapsed and blocked off all the stream mouths of all the…streams.  So.  The water couldn’t move.  And it rained.  And rained.  And rained.  For two days.  And then, the glacier exploded, sending tons and tons of rock up into the air and back down on the glacier.  Hence the wide sections of glacier covered in rocks.

            Nor the newly forming cave that was being tunneled out by water and was about nine feet deep.  Or the many insanely deep, water-filled holes we passed by.  Or the huge ice cave you could fit a cathedral inside.  Or the somewhat shake walk back down.  Or the ten minute lunch break.  Or the ice falls (you know, like water alls).  Or the chance of slips (rock avalanches) that kept us walking non-stop for 400 meters.

            No.  I am afraid I was not awed.  I am not awed easily.  Although the bits and pieces of info were cool.  But, honestly, thinking back on it, it was kind of impressive.  And I certainly know a lot of people that were Awed (with a capital A).

            This concludes another episode of The Quest for New Zealand’s Lord of the Rings by MEE!!!  Stay toned for a short tomorrow at noon.  Thank you for listening and goodnight.