Today we had a trip to Mordor. It involved going 42 km up a river off Lake Wanaka in a jet boat. We were lead by our very own Gandalf otherwise known as Brent, a moari but I'm sure had a bit of blarny irish in him given the tales he told. As we sped up the river Gandalf pointed out various locations used in the filming of the lord of the rings and the hobbit. Even though we have seen two of the films we didn't recognise them! He impressed us with some wizzard fa...

Wanaka is around 60 km east of Fox Glacier but the journey involves a two hour drive down the west coast followed by a futher two hour long climb over the Southern Alps. Between Fox Glacier and Haast there is nothing. Well that's not quite true, there is a lot of temparate rain forest and a few lakes that are stunning but after a night of rain seem to have been infested with nasty bighty sand flys. So we stopped to take few photos before quickly getting back in...