Edoras

The day began with a beautiful sunrise at Aoraki/Mount Cook - and a shock: my 400D announced with a "Error99" message that it would no longer take any more photographs. (With a release count of 30716 the shutter had broken.) For the remaining week, I had to use my fallback: a Casio Exilim Z2100 that I had only brought for underwater use.
This photo was taken at the top of Mt. Sunday (See my Blip 2 days ago.) where the Golden Hall of Edoras once had been. The journey up there had been very adventurous: Because of the recent heavy rain, the river between the car park and Mt. Sunday had risen. The ford where we were meant to cross it was now almost a meter deep. I found a less dangerous site downstream but had to go alone. Matthias had only just escaped from drowning in a risen river two month ago on Hinchinbrook Island, Australia and was not too keen on recalling this experience and Kathrin was too worried because of her weak knee. The water was icy and at one place so deep that I had to take off my trousers. Without the help of the hiking poles, the current would have caught me more than once. But what really scared me was the herd of cows that I had to cross afterwards. They had many young calves and did not seem at all pleased with my appearance. Luckily, I got away without playing torero ;-)
In the end it was all worth it. The panorama from the top was magnificent and it felt just as if the Golden Hall was still there behind me. Definitely my favorite LOTR location on the whole trip!