To the Pinnacles...and beyond!

On a wonderfully sunny Saturday morning, a day trip unfolded…..

Courtesy of Mark and Jillian, Fraser and I found ourselves the guardians of a 6-seater van for 2 weeks. Not ones to miss such an excellent opportunity as this, we planned a day trip with chums (a.k.a. Caz and Kt). We wanted to venture somewhere we’d never been before, combined with a little Lord of the Rings location exploring, so off we went over the beautiful rolling Rimutakas, headed for the Pinnacles!

It took about 2 hours to get there, but the drive was glorious. The radio was playing some ace golden oldies; this combined with the gorgeous sunshine and wonderful scenery had us in great spirits right from the off!
Upon arrival at the Pinnacles we got stuck right into our packed lunches and then planned our route (as there were 3). One of the most fantastic things about the whole experience was that the route we took meant we were hiking up a river bed! Which you can kinda see in some of the pictures below.

Here we are at the start of our journey (and standing in the river bed)...

....and this is Kt and Caz hiking toward the magnificent pinnacles.
This was a much needed recoup half-way up, oh and it's also the start of our 'movie style' b&w photos too.

Here we have a wee 'dare-devil' up in-between a rather precarious pinnacle!...

Also, Fraser found the location used for a scene in "Brain Dead" and so we had to get a picture there.

We also found the location used to film the 'Dimholt road' in the LOTR's and so did our own superb scene there, and a great many others, as every turn we took looked like it was used for filming parts of the movie! There was an absolute peach of a scene that we did, where Frodo and Sam are hiding under Frodo's special cloak by the black gates (so they end up looking like a rock). Fraser came up with a gem of an idea of how to film the soldiers approaching this rock menacingly, but in such a way that we could not identify them...confused? Ah but that's the beauty of it, you'll have to wait and see the finished product! Har har!

On our return leg, back to the car and down from these mystical pinnacles, this was our view...

Gorgeous I think you will agree! It was one of the best days we've had out here (and there have been many of those) as it combined so many things that we all love to do. There is something so special and vibrant about tramping into the wilderness of New Zealand that is hard to explain unless you have done it. So come on guys!...get yourselves out here!