More Mordor

We left our charming farmhouse B & B with a self-effacing and witty British host. When I took a photo he said “I should have shown you my better side, but I don’t have one”. He provided the breakfast and took good care of us as his wife was visiting their daughter in Auckland. We travelled up to Whakapapa Village and could see Mt. Ngauruhoe, an active volcano which last erupted in 1996. We took a chairlift up the rocky and craggy ski hills, past worn looking swiss style chalets dotting the barren hillside to the highest restaurant in NZ at about 2000 metres. This place, and others I've referred to, are like Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. For those of you are unfamiliar with the trilogy, Mordor was the dwelling place of Sauron, in the southeast of northwestern Middle-earth to the East of Anduin, the great river. Orodruin, a volcano in Mordor, was the destination of the Fellowship of the Ring (and later Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee) in the quest to destroy the One Ring. Mordor was unique because of the three enormous mountain ridges surrounding it, from the north, from the west and from the south. It was after watching the movie that I became even more enchanted with NZ and though Tolkien identified Mordor as a place in Sicily, I think we just visited it.