27 I woke fairly late, and enjoyed some venison sausage sandwiches for breakfast, then went to the i-Site to sort out my accomodation and Glacier plans. This pretty much concludes all the plan making needed for the rest of the New Zealand leg of my tour, with my scheduled arrival in Christchurch now the 1st of December. I'm a few days early, so might move the flight to Sydney forwards, as that would make visitting Tasmania easier for me.
With the arrival date figured for Christchurch, I messages Ben, and we've agreed to meet up for a pint, as long as he's not working.
I regrouped at hostel, then went to the 4x4 Offroad shop front to embark on the afternoon's wine tour, including off road sections taking us through landscapes and settings that were used in the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies.
We went by the Shotover river, which is one of the main rivers involved in the 1860's gold rush for the area. The driver advised that i has a flow of anywhere between 20 and 40 cubic meters per second of water - currently it was flowing closer to 40 than 20.
We then went on to Skippers road, which is notorious for being the 7th most dangerous road in the world. We were in safe hands though, and got to some spots that were very scenic.
There were 6 of us on the tour, so it was quite cozy, and we enjoyed the good banter between everyone as we went to the various places for photo opportunities and exciting off road sections.
After skipers road, we went on to the Macetown road, which fords the Arrow river over 20 times - though we just drove up the river for a lot of it, and even parked in the middle at a section of the river that was used for one of the LotR scenes where tere is a river flood. While we were parked, we watched the LotR scene in question - Ford of Bruinin
We made it to Arrowtown, which was a Chinese town set up during the 1862 gold rush, and has been preserved mostly in its original state. It is now a popular venue for tourists, and only about 20 minutes outside of Queenstown. It is also used a lot for married couples who come to renew their vows or have a second wedding.
Just outside the town is another ford, which we went to, the place where the scenes for Isildurs death (Lord of the Rings) were filmed, though as it was late spring with leaves on the trees, it was not quite as obvious as the other locations. It looked like we were going to be unable to watch any further clips, until I came to the rescue with my power pack, as the iPad had run out of power - so between us we mustered together the power and cabling to get it to work. In hindsight, I should have asked for a discount!
After all the off road and excitement, we were taken to the vineyards for the wine tasting part of the trip. Our first was Mount Rosa, which hadn't been included in the tour previously.
They had a nice selection, ranging from Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Rose, Pinot Noir and a select Pinot Noir. The Pinot Noir was very interesting as it had a very sweet smell, but was crisp and dry to taste.
The other Vineyard on the tour was Chard's, who also had Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir and Rieslings to taste. I think the Riesling at Chard's was more tangy, but the Pinot Noir from Mount Rosa's was the best.
I made it back to the hostel, and decided that in order to have some food for the hostel stay in Franz Josef, I would save my current groceries, and have one more meal in Queenstown.
I pondered on the merits of getting a Fergburger, but looking at the queue I changed my mind - it felt to me that it was all hype, and so I went back to the Fat Badger, and had a Scratching badger pizza instead!
When I got back to the hostel, I met a new room mate - Daniel from Shanghai. We had a chat about how difficult it was to learn to speak Chinese, and I played him the you tube of someone reading The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den, which of course he could understand without the script - so we were both laughing at this when another person came in to the room, and was a little confused as here we were laughing as my phone is making 'shi shi shi' sounds, so we had to explain it to him as best we could!
I retired down to the lounge to write up my journals, though was distracted somewhat by a movie that was playin gon the TV - Mr Deeds, which was a comedy about a guy seeming to inherit 40 billion dollars. During one of the advert breaks an advert came on for some loan company, to which I commented about how i would probably charge silly interest, and Vaugh, from Auckland, who had turned on the film, agreed with me. We chatted a bit about finance and the psychology of rich business people. Vaughn was at the hostel as he had come to Queenstown from Auckland for work.
With my journals all written up, I went to bed, as the bus up to Franz Josef glacier was set to leave at 8am