Ride of the Rings
Trip Start
Oct 16, 2007
1
36
83
Trip End
May 09, 2008
Glenorchy,
New Zealand
Saturday, January 12, 2008
What was cool was that our driver was an Uruk-hai in one of the LOR films. Apparently they paid Uruk-hais $150NZ to run up and down the hills in a sweltering bodysuit of plastic and neoprene, but all our driver ended up doing was playing a dead Uruk-hai lying on a beach. Some of the horses at Dart Stables were also used in the movie, and the driver said that couple of them seemed to have picked up quite an attitude after the filming was done! It's cool that many of the local guides around the area have played a part in the LOR fims
The Road to Glenorchy
. The info center back in Queenstown said that pretty much everyone in town had some part in the entire LOR project. Many of the tour companies used to produce the film now do tours like Ride of the Rings, which is great for the local economy. The weather was not cooperating that day and it was quite gusty out there. One of the guides thought it might be a little risky to go out as the horses are usually a little more nervous in gusty weather. But they decided to go for it anyway and doubled up on the group size. We had 9 people in our group (usually 4-5) with 2 guides to keep an eye out on us. The guides assigned us each a horse. I got Merlin, who I was told was gentle and had nothing to worry about. Frank was assigned Zodiac, who we later found out had a bit of an attitude.
We left Paradise and headed into the woods to seek some shelter from the winds. I found out Merlin, like many of the other horses in our group, loved to eat so I had to get used to pulling up on his reins to get him to move on. Merlin also liked to mess with the tail of the horse in front of him, which caused some friction between them at times. Frank ended up having to discipline Zodiac for the first quarter of the ride to show him who was boss!
We got to 3 areas where LOR scenes were shot - Lothlorien, Amon Hen and the area used for Isengard. They also showed us some scene from Narnia, and showed us another place where they will be shooting the upcoming Wolverine movie. The scenery was absolute spectacular. The only thing was it was a little difficult to hear the guide given how windy it was!
