This is part 7 of a series of blogs on my 2024 trip to New Zealand.
Click here to see all posts in the series.
We left part 6 after a full day on a coach, visiting individual filming locations in the area of Queenstown. The final day of the tour was an optional activity day, allowing each member of the tour group to pick from several activities (or go completely off on their own).
When we had originally booked the tour, we had been given the choice of:
- An exciting 4WD LoTR tour
- A peaceful and indulgent Wine Tour
- The beautiful Doubtful Sound Day Tour
- The breathtaking Milford Sound Day Tour
- An extravagant Glacier LoTR Helicopter Flight
Now, we really wanted to do the helicopter tour. Really wanted to do it. But we had already spent all of our savings to get to New Zealand, and we both had no idea if we would actually like flying in a helicopter. That, coupled with the £1000 it would cost us, meant it was off the table. Maybe another time.
We knew we were going to spend a couple of days at the start of our holiday in Auckland, near the vineyards on Waiheke Island, so the wine tour was not for us.
Choosing between the day tours and the 4WD tour was hard, but we were there to do LoTR stuff, so we picked the 4WD tour.
Thursday 13th: The Tour Wraps Up
Yellow in the morning and blue in the afternoon.
(Open in Google Maps)
Nomad 4WD Safari - Part 1
So we had signed up for the full day LoTR tour, which meant a 8am start, practically the afternoon. The tour was set to take us about nine and a half hours, including a break for lunch.
Nomad Safaris do two half day tours, with a full day tour which is both separated by lunch. The first tour heads North-West of Queenstown, up and along the Wakatipu Lake edge to the small hamlet of Glenorchy. This morning tour would visit all the yellow points on the map above.
The second tour is more ‘rugged’ and would take us North-East of Queenstown to Gibbston Valley, Arrowtown and the Skippers Canyon Road. This afternoon tour would take us to all the blue points on the map above.
As we stepped out of the hotel, a convoy of three Toyota 4WD Land Cruisers awaited us outside. Each had a LoTR license plate and enough space for a driver and six people (as long as those people are thin, which I am not).
We pressed ourselves into the cars and away we went!
Now, I don’t normally get car sick, but being squeezed into the back of one of these Toyota 4WD Land Cruisers got me feeling queasy. The soft suspension, the inability to see out the front because I was in the back, and the winding roads, all added up to a morning of nausea. I have learned my lesson to take sea-sickness tablets — which might just be placebos — on holidays from now on.
Beorn’s Hall and Isengard
After two interim stops along the coast of the Wakatipu Lake, one in the very spacious town of Glenorchy, we arrived at our first movie location an hour and a half later.
The good weather we had enjoyed on the holiday so far, had ended. A fog had rolled in that obscured most of the mountains, and it was raining. Not enough to soak us through, but enough to make being outside less than enjoyable.
The leader of our tour group was actually an Englishman who had emigrated some years earlier (a journey I’m tempted to emulate), and he told us that the area we had ended up at had been used as the filming location for several films.
The first was ‘Beorn’s Hall’ from the second Hobbit film ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’. All we could see was the hill that it sat on, but it was interesting to see none-the-less.
The second was ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’. A ‘fake’ farmhouse was blown up, the remains of which are next to the location for Beorn’s Hall, which can be seen in the picture below.
From here we could also see ‘Isengard’, but the fog was so thick it was difficult to see much. On the one hand, it’s a shame, because we wanted to see it. On the other hand, we had seen a lot of mountains so far this holiday; it wasn’t a massive loss.
We normally would have continued north to see more of Isengard, but the weather was bad enough that it had flooded the road. The cars were fitted with snorkels, but it sounded like the water was deeper than the tour guides felt comfortable driving through.
Lothlórien, Tea and Swords
We jumped back in the Land Cruisers and headed south. Even though it had only been an hour and a half since we set off, as any honest Englishman would know, it was time for a cup of tea and a slice of cake.
The guides handed out some replica LoTR weapons, and we proceeded to pass the time pretending to sword fight each other. It was quite fun.
Ithilien Lookout
With the rain easing, we headed back towards Queenstown, stopping short at the ‘12 Mile Delta’ campsite. Just a small trek through the forest leads you to the ridge used as the filming location for Ithilien, where Frodo and Sam spot the Oliphaunts in ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers’.
We had a bit of fun reproducing the scenes, and once again I was too busy ‘taking it all in’ and missed my other half posing for a ‘Po. Tay. Toes’ photo.
This was the last stop on the morning tour which Nomad Safaris market as a half-day tour which you can do on its own.
We didn’t get to see some stops, which was not the tours fault, but it means there was a lot of driving for not a massive pay-off. The places we did visit didn’t really need a 4WD as well.
★★★☆☆ 3/5 - I know this seems low, but I think I would have put a 4 if not for the weather, and I know that isn’t Nomads fault. I’m also comparing it to the afternoon tour, which was a lot of fun, and made the morning seem, just OK.
Lunch at Balls and Bangles
With the morning tour over, it was time to grab some lunch. The choice was ours, but we were each given a $10 voucher for a place called Balls and Bangles, which made the choice pretty obvious.
I love bagels1, so I was happy to go.
I can’t exactly remember what I had — my other half is adamant we had a ‘The Kransky’ and a ‘Pastrami’ — but I remember it being so good that we decided to go back for breakfast on our last day in Queenstown.
★★★★★ 5/5 - Good, quick service, and delicious bagels.
Nomad 4WD Safari - Part 2
In a spare ten minutes between lunch and the afternoon tour, I popped into a pharmacy and bought some ‘Sea-legs’ sea-sickness tablets, which worked great. I don’t know what is in them, it might just be sugar, but I have recommended them to anyone who will listen.
We, again, squeezed back into our Land Cruiser, ready for the promised ‘rugged’ afternoon tour.
Skippers Road
Our first stop was a history lesson about the gold rush that New Zealand found itself a part of, back in 1880.
From dangerousroads.org:
It was built during the gold rush when a perilous track was the only access to the town of Skippers and the Upper Shotover Diggings. Constructed between 1883 and 1890, it was considered to be an engineering miracle as the road is literally carved out of solid schist rock and doesn’t look much different today than when it was first created.
Skippers Road is a single width road, with enough space for one car, next to a hundred-meter drop into the canyon.
The pictures I took didn’t do this ledge justice, but I found one on Google Maps, uploaded by ‘Will Heesterman’:
Although dangerous, it was exhilarating as we traversed the side of the hill like mountain goats, travelling for about fifteen minutes into the canyon and back.
It was here, while looking down the sheer drop, that it began to snow. We were in New Zealand at the start of Skiing season, so we expected it to snow at some point. It was starting to snow while we were balanced on the side of a mountain, which was a bit interesting.
The Ford of Bruinen
Another half an hour in the Land Cruisers brought us to Arrowtown. The town was beautifully preserved and seemed to have taken the same architectural inspiration which influenced 1850s American towns. I could have been convinced that Wētā Workshop had built facades for a movie that was being filmed soon.
The historic buildings are only one of the two things I remember from Arrowtown. The other being an automated toilet which had the same robotic voice as the ED-209 in the original Robocop movie. After informing me I had ten minutes to use the bathroom, I was left wondering if the time limit would be enforced by laser cannon.
We were not in Arrowtown for the architecture, however, we were travelling through to go to the Arrow River, which was used as the filming location for the ‘Ford of Bruinen’.
This is where we got to make use of the snorkels on the Land Cruisers as our drivers took us fording through the river multiple times, weaving from one bank to the other. You could tell this was a part of the job our driver loved as he kept hanging back from the convoy, so he could go faster down though the water and up the other side. It felt like we were on a roller coaster and I loved every minute.
Once we had forded the river for what felt like the 5th time, we stopped at the filming location of the ‘Ford of Bruinen’. It had been a hard afternoon of pointing and looking at things, so we naturally had some tea and cake while we were taught how to use a pan to pan for gold.
I hate to disappoint, but I did not find any gold. Even so, I did find it a fun activity; it broke up the flow of the tour with something new I had not tried in a long time. I hadn’t panned for ‘gold’ since I went to Legoland Windsor when I was young.
After failing to boost my wealth, we jumped back in the cars and headed to our final filming location of the holiday (don’t worry, we didn’t forget to ford the river another 5 times).
The Argonath (Pillars of the Kings) on the Anduin River
As with all the filming locations we had seen on this holiday, there was normally a bit of CGI tomfoolery used in the films; meaning the physical location is only partially recognisable. The Argonath was by far the worst location for this.
Maybe it was a bit too much to expect two several-hundred meter tall status lining the side of the river, but if you had not told me what I was looking at, I wouldn’t have guessed it was featured in LoTR at all.
It was still a stunning view regardless.
This final location added a nice symmetry to our time in Queenstown, as this location overlooked the Bungy centre we visited after landing two days ago.
And with that, our 4WD adventure had come to an end.
★★★★★ 5/5 - The afternoon tour made the morning tour seem pedestrian. We actually made use of the Land Cruisers, splashing in and out of rivers; I found every moment a joy. The morning tour had more film locations, but we had seen so many of those by now that the addition of the 4WD cars (and us needing them), made for a wonderful afternoon out.
All Good Things Come to an End
We returned to our hotel, with only one thing left on our tour’s agenda.
After starting ten days ago back in Auckland, we had travelled by coach, and by air, from the northern island, to the southern. It was time for a goodbye dinner.
Our tour had come to an end, and for dinner we gathered in one of the hotels function rooms for a buffet and some tearful goodbye speeches.
It’s always a bit cheesy to say you will miss people after only having known them ten days, but we had all bonded over Tolkiens books, and Peter Jackson’s films.
The tour had shown us more filming locations than I could count, allowed us to meet some minds behind the cameras, and had introduced us to the beauty of New Zealand.
When we started out, I was unsure if paying for a tour was a wise decision. I could, of course, take myself to all of these filming locations. The locations are not a secret, they are on the New Zealand Tourism Website. However, facing the end of the tour, I was in no doubt that it was the best decision we could have made. The tour had given us a group of thirty other Tolkien nerds to hang out with, and more importantly, experience the holiday with.
If we had self-toured, I would not have learnt what it’s like to build your own house in Australia. Or that the Americans find the way the UK calls ‘Crossing Guards’ ‘Lollipop Ladies’, adorable. I would not have heard many of the stories from locals about the filming.
The tour turned what would have been ten days of me and my other half cramped into a rental car into a fun, relaxing, and educational experience, where every logistical detail was handled for me; I only needed to be present.
We visited places that we might not have thought to visit on our own, like Hairy Feet Waitomo, which was in many ways more enjoyable than Hobbiton.
If you’re reading this, and you can, hit up Red carpet tours. It was worth every penny, and more.
★★★★★★ 6/5 - It’s my scoring system, and I’ll abuse it if I want to.
Minus 5º ICE BAR
After our farewell dinner, we headed out for some drinks with two of the tour group. Unfortunately the two people they had planned to go with had fallen ill, so we were picked as the B-team.
We visited Minus 5º ICE BAR, which brands itself as the “coolest experience and an adventure you’ll never forget”. Big enough to host around thirty people, the bar had walls of ice, furniture made of ice, and even glasses made of ice.
As we arrived the bar provided — and required we wear — knee-length thick jackets, so we wouldn’t ‘freeze to death’. In a room made of ice it was understandably cold. We had a couple of cocktails which were quite refreshing, the bar encouraging us to smash the ice ‘glasses’ afterwards, which was quite cathartic.
Queenstown has a couple of ‘ice bars’, so I am unsure if this was the best, but I enjoyed how unique it was. Given it was so cold, we only stayed about an hour, preferring to head back to a nice warm hotel for a nightcap.
★★★★☆ 4/5 - We didn’t pay for entry, so I can’t comment on the cost, but it was interesting.
Friday 14th: Milford Sound
Our tour is over, but our holiday still has a couple of days in it. Tomorrow we head to the breathtaking Milford Sound; an unofficial ‘eighth Wonder of the World’.
Kia Ora! See you in part 8!
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I am still refusing to get breakfast at McDonald’s in the UK since they stopped serving breakfast bagels. ↩
