New Zealand: The North Island, and Lord of the Rings hilarity

I finally decided to bite the bullet and spend a wee bit on some internet time. I’m going to skip the remnants of the Australian stuff for now, since I’m in New Zealand mode. Today I’m going to put up my pics from the North Island, and also some mystery filming locations from Lord of the Rings. See if you can tell which scene was shot where! I’ll make a full post on the LotR tour, along with some particularly hilarious photos, after everybody’s had a chance to ponder over it. (It’ll be after the other stuff, deep down below the cut. I’ll announce it with bold text, for your comfort.)

I already said most of what I wanted to say about the North Island, so I’ll just put some of the best pics up for your enjoyment. First: shadows of Hobbiton.

Doesn’t this look like a human-sized and modernized hobbiton? Unfortunately the little round hills don’t translate too well in this picture – I took a few, and this is the one that turned out the best, sadly. Though this next one has a hint of it, as well, maybe a bit more dramatically:

This next one has some roundy Hobbitness too, though it was taken a bit further south, in Rotorua.

The whisps you can see aren’t clouds, they’re steam which rises from the earth (and various bodies of water – hence a number of warm natural baths in the area). My friend Laura, of 24-hour theatre fame and such, spent more time there and talks about it a bit in her blog.

Here’s another one that shows the steam:

The next stop we made was at Lake Taupo, where we could see the mountains in the distance.

We proceeded to drive around the lake, which was a lot of fun because the road was CLINGING to the side of the hill:

See that little line that runs like a rim around that mountain? That’s the road.

We spent a long time winding through mountain roads, but once we got out of that and onto open ground again we had an AMAZING view.

The view from the other side of the bus was really interesting as well – talk about TOTAL contrast to what it was like up north (and what it soon returned to, once we got out of the mountainous area).

(Not bad for pictures taken out of the window of a bus, eh? Also: Sheep!)

For the last few hours of the trip, we were in total darkness. It was almost alarming when I looked out my window at about 8 o’clock and saw waves coming up the beach. I didn’t get a view of Wellington until the next morning, when I opened the drapes in my room on the 6th floor of the hostel.

Not bad for a room that was costing me all of 25$ a night!

I was really drained that first morning so I slept in fairly late and didn’t get to explore all that much. I did wander around the harbour (which is beautiful) and take a bunch of photos to try to get a feeling for the city.

These must have been some DANGEROUS trees, because they were totally fenced in on all sides!

Okay, so see the picture above? That’s an empty pool-like area, or water-designed area, as far as I can tell. And there are steps that… descend right down into it? I don’t get it.

The one above and the one below are of the Civic centre, which is basically town hall and the site of the city library.

The pigeons! They’re WINNING!

Um. I can’t decide if somebody actually died at this intersection and they decided to use it as a warning for people to look before they cross, or if somebody just has a really weird sense of humour.

The next day I wanted to do more wandering and picture-taking, but of course it was raining. Not that this stopped me entirely, of course. It just limited my scope a little. My first order of business for the day was to take the cable car up to the botannical gardens. Because… well, duh. Cable car.

The hill is REALLY steep. This cable line has been in operation for over a hundred years, though they revamped it in the 1970’s so this isn’t the original car. The view from the top was pretty cool.

At the top, in the original winding house for the cable car, there’s a museum that talks about the history of the line. And the original cable car was there, which was kind of neat.

Sitting on the OUTSIDE like that would have been pretty fun.

The view from the bottanical gardens was great, but it was starting to rain in earnest so I didn’t stay up there too long.

While I was up there, though, I saw a sign for the “Sundial of Human Involvement.” And with a name like that, I HAD to check it out.

So I did – it’s literally a sundial in which YOU, THE VIEWER become the, um, pointer. Or whatever it’s called. There’s a figure-eight with the months of the year, and certain days within that month. You stand on the correct month and day with your arms stretched up above your head and with your palms pressed together, and it tells the time (apparently it’s accurate to within a few minutes.)

Of course, it being a cloudy day I didn’t get to try it out.

I tried to walk down through the gardens, but it was rainy and wet and I was getting lost frequently, so I gave up and took the cable car back down. (Apparently they used to charge two pence to go up, but just a penny to go down, way back in the day – lots of folks seemed to enjoy the walk back down into town.) I swung by the parliament building, which is called the “Beehive” because… well:

After this I went to the train station, because I thought I’d have to go there in a couple of days and I like to case joints out so that I know how to get there and that kind of thing. And this amused me, but I imagine it will amuse many of you even more:

That night I spent some time at the Te Papa museum, which was really great – lots of different areas that would take hours and hours to fully explore. I also stumbled upon a small gallery that was showing some portrait work earlier in the day, which was really interesting; I’m glad I happened upon it.

I had gotten wind that there were a couple of productions on in town, so I checked them out. They were playing at the theatre across from Te Papa, so I was able to pop right over there (and all of this is less than a five minute walk from my hostel, which is also nice.) I wound up going to see Rome: The Musical, which was great! Written and directed by a local fellow, but I didn’t realize that until I looked him up later. It was singing straight through, and the singing was GREAT (the songs also stuck with me for the next couple of days, so they obviously had something going for them.) Like I was saying to Laura, the show allowed itself to have a couple of quite sombre moments – like laying someone into a grave… and then doing a samba on it. Very fun.

And then, the next morning, was the LORD OF THE RINGS TOUR!

Welcome to Name That Scene!

I’m running out of internet time, so I’ll be brief. Here are some pictures of film locations. See if you can tell what they are. (Feel free to be as specific as possible! If you can name the exact MOMENT, then you rock. But if you just have a sense that a general scene happened somewhere, go for it!) A couple of them are pretty tough, so I may give a hint or two.

LOCATION 1

(Hint: A very general location – many scenes were shot here. Can you guess which ones?)

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LOCATION 2

(Hint: Extended edition only.)

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LOCATION 3:

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LOCATION 4:

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LOCATION 5:

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LOCATION 6:

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LOCATION 7:

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LOCATION 8:

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Tags: Lord of the Rings

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