Paradise: The Gateway to Middle Earth

**Nerd Alert**

Paradise provided the amazing landscape for movies such as X-Men Origins: Wolverine, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, and of course The Lord of the Rings trilogy!

To get there, we followed the signs from Glenorchy, which took us down a gravel road for about 20km. Soon enough, the scenery began to look very "LOTRish."

Several Lord of the Rings locations were filmed here, including: Isengard, Lothlorien, and Amon Hen. Boromir's death scene was filmed here as well.

Like our experience at Twelve Mile Delta, we knew we were in the general area, but we didn't know the exact locations for each place. Without even a guidebook to help us out, we had to guess. Luckily, some of them didn't seem too difficult...

Entrance to Lothlorien(?)

Lothlorien or Amon Hen. What do you think?

Just take out the cows and the fence and add the Tower of Orthanc... Isengard, anyone?

We followed the gravel road as far as we could go, through forests and over creeks, until we ended up at a car park and the start of several trails, including the Dart Trail. Though we didn't end up going tramping this day, Andy did do a bit of panning along the creeks we passed:

Movies aside, Paradise really is a beautiful place that definitely lives up to its name. If we ever make it back here, I would love to explore this area more thoroughly on horseback. :)