Two trips to Paradise

Thursday 13th March

Today was the day we had wanted to go on a Lord of the Rings tour, but we had decided not to pay the excessive prices. So instead we went off to find Paradise. Paradise is an area some distance beyond Glenorchy, which is a little township about 45 miles from Queenstown. It is in effect the back of beyond, and was obviously used in Lord of the Rings as it is untouched by humans.

We drove to Glenorchy, a nice drive by itself along the lakes edge, and found it to be a typical Scottish highlands village. Well what did you expect with that name. Actually looking at the names on the war memorial you really would have thought you were in Scotland. On the pier overlooking the lake we met a man fishing, and he gave us directions to get to Paradise. "Drive the road out of town, and when it finishes drive on the track. After it finishes, keep following the path, fording a few streams, until you get to a stream you can't ford. When you get there, cross the river by foot, go round the corner, and the mountain will rise up in front of you and you can go no further. Then you are at paradise"

Suffice to say that is pretty much what happened, we reached the point at which they said don't take your rented car past, and kept going. Eventually after Clare got a bit concerned over some of our fordings, we reached one we decided not to try, not because it was too deep, but because of the boulders in the stream. We think it was the right one. Either way it was beautiful, and could easily be called Paradise.

What the guy didn't tell us was that on the way we would run into a red light. Turns out Lord of the Rings was not the only film made there, they were in the middle of making Wolverine. We turned a corner to see a field full of catering trucks, a load of 4x4s, and a helicopter chasing a motorbike. We were halted by security, as they were filming a scene they wanted us to wait. Clare got a bit excited to think Hugh Jackman might be in town, but it turned out he was back in Sydney in the studio, and we were stuck with the stunt doubles. Eventually we got let through, no helicopters chased us.

When we got back to Queenstown we decided to go for the other taste of Paradise. Fergburger is a famous takeaway burger place in Queenstown, so good it allegedly caused Burger King to pull out of Queenstown. Anyway we decided to try it, and all I can say is they are pretty much the best burgers I have ever had. I had the full monty, bacon, cheese and all sorts of other toppings. It was awesome. The burger was so big it didn't even fit on the plate. Even Paul's veggie burger was pretty good.

So that was our two trips to Paradise, one scenic, and one culinary.