This One Was a Long Day

This day started out with a trip to a small village town called Arrowtown, the South Island of New Zealand has a lot of areas that are similar in climate to the Northwest, it was summer for them there though. This was a sweet old dog waiting outside the pharmacy for his owner.

Fun in the phone booth...

After exploring Arrowtown, we went to Gibson Valley for lunch and to see the wine caves, the smell was amazing when you walked in, they are very old... and a little creepy.

After Lunch we were picked up by our friendly New Zealander jeep driver. This was the jeep labeled, Safari of the Rings, they drove us all over, very close to cliffs, and through rivers to show us a few of the sights where Lord of The Rings was filmed.

This particular scene was used for the opening in Lord of the Rings where they have some warriors riding in on horses

Later that night we were off to see a Maori show, the Maoris were the original inhabitants of NZ but the British took over the islands at some point. Above our Hotel in Queenstown, there was a gondola that was the steepest one I'd ever been on, at the top there was a Maori Cultural Center, a luge, alpine slide, and paragliding. This was the amazing view from the gondola.

The Maori Dancers were awesome, when I stood in front of this guy, he said, Whoa, tall... so that's why I'm half crouched. The women do their eyes like this to show beauty. It's a traditional custom, they also flutter their hands to mimic water shimmering. The balls the women perform with are called Poi, they brought some of us from the audience up to try and learn a few moves, it was definitely harder than it looks. This is Julie, she kept me laughing while away from home... I look like a giant compared to her, no fair; it didn't help I was wearing heels...