Mt Sunday and Surroundings

By Jen.

After spending a couple of days in Arthur’s Pass, we felt it was time to move on. At this point, I still hadn’t read most of the reference book for interesting things to do, so I let Jonathan fast read and dictate the direction for the day. He mentioned a fun-sounding place called Cave Stream where you can walk through a cave with a stream running through it. I had visions of our last walk through a stream-filled cave in Australia, which was super fun, so we thought we would give a try.  The location is a small scenic reserve near Castle Hill.

The entrance to the cave is there at the base of the cliff on the right.

Here is the exit.

The day after our jaunt to the peak of Mt Avalanche, I was definitely fighting off some sickness. My best guess was a sinus infection. Once my nose starts running (a common side effect of cooler weather), then I get a post-nasal drip, which goes around my tonsils and gets everything infected. With a slight fever and a running nose, I didn’t want to traverse through water, so we decided to skip the walk through Cave Stream and just explore the small reserve. After consulting the guidebook again, we decided to explore Mt Sunday, which is more widely known in the LOTR trilogy as the location of Edoras. After long drive out and back into the mountains, we arrived.

Although surrounded by pastures, it is still set in lovely settings. The short rocky mound in the middle-ground is Mt Sunday or Edoras. It isn’t as big as I thought it would be.

We had to cross over a braided river to get there. Some areas had a thick moss growing.

One of the views from the top.

Now, you might be thinking that I am chasing after LOTR filming sites because I am obsessed with the Tolkien universe. However, you would be wrong. I have no need to pretend I am Eowyn stabbing the Ringwraith. No, rather, I am looking for those sites because the scenery in LOTR is gorgeous! So, you will find me chasing after the sites to present beautiful scenes to you.

Since we were taking it easy, we decided to check out a river we saw on our way to Mt Sunday, Rakaia River. When we passed by, it had a lot of tourists, so figured it might be nice.

It is a beautiful, glacial-fed river. See how the blue is making the bridge appear blue?

We discovered there was a track along the gorge, so we decided to try it out.

There is a small waterfall!

Then, after a call for technical support for my dad, I spent the rest of the day reading that region in the book so that we would know where to go next!