Look for your friends, but do not trust to hope. It has forsaken these lands...

During our adventures, the weather seemed to always do the exact opposite of what we wanted. As a result, when we take a picture of a Lord of the Rings location, the movie scene that we compare to will depict it sunny, but we get it rainy, or when it is actually supposed to look miserable, we get shots of a bright, cheery landscape instead.

On the 14th we were hoping for sun but woke up to fog and cold winds, so we decided to first head to The Dead Marshes. However, they were only visible from a distance, and any recognizable location was out of the question. Our next stop was better; from a viewpoint overlooking a river we saw another shot the River Anduin curving off into the distance. Hoping for a better look, we walked down a mucky dirt road for about five minutes before realizing the road didn't actually get to the river itself, only paralleled it. Te Anau was our next stop, and for a town that supposedly thrives on tourism, it was rather unimpressive. It was like walking around in Fort Frances, with half the businesses closed and the other half portraying faded facades and business fronts. Resigning ourselves that it was not in our best interests to stop here, we drove back in the direction we came from, and took an access road up towards Mavora Lakes.

Fourty-five minutes later up a dirt road, we reached another Lord of the Rings location. In the second movie, the Orcs who captured Merry and Pippin are killed and burned by the Rohirrim. The location of this orc funeral pyre, where Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli find them at the edge of Fangorn Forest, is just off the road in a farmer's field. Following the advice of our guidebook, we hopped the fence and climbed to where, using a combination of the Ipad, guidebook, and what we could see of the surrounding landscape, we were able to line up a few shots in the nearly exact location they filmed in.

Reaching Mavora Lakes, which is protected in a Department of Conservation campground, we had a quick meal of soup at the south end of the campground. It was quick mostly because there were ravenous black-flies about, which drove us off quite promptly. We then drove to the far end of the campground and wandered out into the forest following a semi-marked trail that was littered with fake, colourfully painted mushrooms for some reason. At the base of the ridge we followed the trail to the top and made it to another location, the scene where Frodo, Merry and Pippin hide from the Orcs at Amon Hen. At this spot it was easy to take pictures that are noticeably right out of the film due to the large unmistakable stump Merry and Pippin used and the nearby tree Frodo hid behind that were, for the most part, unchanged.

*hiding as orcs run past*

"Frodo!"  "Hide here! Quick! Come on!"

*shakes head*

"What's he doin?"  ..."He's leavin."

"No!... "Hey! Hey You! Over here! Hey! Over here!"

Pleased with our success thus far, we returned to the park's entrance where we crossed off yet another film location from a suspension bridge across the lake's out-flowing river: a shot of the Fellowship as their boats turn from the Silverlode River in Lothlorian into the River Anduin.

We then returned to the vehicle and caught up on some photo editing and journals, but this was cut short when the computer started to have issues charging from the vehicle's battery. We tried pushing the adapter back into the slot, and then a far more sinister cause crossed our minds. Joe climbed up front rapidly, reaching for the key desperately to turn the vehicle on and recharge the battery, to no avail. Once, twice, three times, over and over we tried to turn the van on, but the battery was well and truly dead. With dark approaching, Joe ventured out into the New Zealand wilderness, heading further into the park to contact someone, anyone, with a pair of jumper cables to revive the crippled campervan. Thank goodness there were no large predators  or Uruk-Hai in the forests. Through the kindness of a pair of Spanish immigrants and a native New Zealander we got the car going just as it was getting too dark to see. So we drove into the park, found a quiet spot, left the car idling for another twenty minutes just to be safe, then went to sleep still fending off stupid annoying blackflies.