Visit to Middle Earth

So the roller coaster of "We're flying... no we aren't, yes we are, no we aren't" continues. About an hour before scheduled departure from the hotel last night (11:45 pm) I received yet another call saying the flight has been delayed by an unknown amount of time, and "we'll be in touch." Oh Joy! So I turned my alarm off, and tried to go to sleep. I had pumped myself full of caffeine, by consuming large amounts of dark chocolate, 3 cups of tea, and a tall espresso during dinner. So between that, and the mounting frustrations of all of this, I have to say, that was about the worst night of sleep I have had since I arrived.
That morning I received word that we were going to be scheduled to leave Monday morning. Great. Its Friday here, and now I've got to find stuff to do. Soooo, my colleague whom I have been traveling with, and I booked ourselves on a Lord of the Rings tour. This is my preferred way of viewing the scenery of any particular country, but hey, hassle free transportation, lunch was provided, and if they were good, a decent commentary to go along. Why not. Overall, I'm quite satisfied with what you get for the price. The only drawback, is I didn't get to stop at every place I would have liked to take a photo. The vehicle (see picture) we were in was off road capable (3 axles, 6 wheels total) and it had a snorkel to go through some deeper water, which we did (about 2 feet deep), and was pretty fun. Yeah, I know, its not crazy serious off roading, but the things designed to hold about 20 people, what do you expect?
Also, while we were at it, I decided to take a train ride over the Southern Alps to the west coast as well. That's tomorrow. I hope the weather was as great as it was today. Amazing. I haven't decided if I would ever want to live here or not, but it certainly wouldn't be the worst place to live on the planet. I'd honestly say its one of the best, of the places I've been so far. It just seems remote to me. Perhaps I'd think differently if more than just my nuclear family came with me.
So I'll leave you with a few photos from the Akoroa trip from yesterday, and some Edoras photos from today. Just a sampling though. I don't care for the editing choices I get in Picasa, and I'm used to Adobe Lightroom, so all my final picture posts won't be until I get home.

On the way in, it was a cool ,windy, overcast morning.

By Afternoon the clouds started to break up. This was in the main little harbor area.

On the trip back, we stopped for a sunnier picture.

The vehicle we rode in.
First siting of the hill the set was built in. (center rightish)
Just a nice shot. Actually, just left off the shot is the background to Helms Deep. You'll have to wait to see. All of the "dust" is just that. It's "rock flour" on the river beds kicked up by the winds this area is well known for. Wind gusts up to 110 mph are common. When I was there, it blew my glasses off my face.