Middle Earth Epic: Get Off The Road!

After visiting Hobbiton, the next couple days have been all about hitting the road and eventually ending up in Wellington.  Starting out from Hamilton, I made my way south.  The first part of the trip was a repeat of my drive to the Waitomo Caves, but eventually I passed there and continued south.  The drive isn't fast, but it's pretty.  A lot of fairly steep hillsides covered in grass that look almost terraced, but I think maybe it is just grass growing on top of piles of lava rock, making it appear terraced.  I'm not actually sure.  The funny thing is it was all these hills and then I turned onto another road and things changed dramatically.  

The rolling green was gone and replaced with brush that was more brown than anything else (I do have to remind myself at times that it is just spring here, and this was also up at higher elevations).  The brush reminded me a lot of parts of Iceland, the sort of tundra feel.  This change in scenery occurred when I turned onto the road to Tongariro National Park.  Tongariro NP is the oldest national park in New Zealand and the 6th oldest national park in the world!  

Tongariro National Park is home to 3 active volcanoes, one of which played Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings films.  The largest of the 3 volcanoes is Mount Ruapehu.  The last major eruptions at Mount Ruapehu occurred in 1995 and 1996, though smaller ones have occurred as recently as 2009.  The crazy thing is there is a ski resort up on the side of the volcano!  The area around the ski resort also doubled as the lands of Mordor in the LOTR films.  I never actually saw the majority of Mount Ruapehu because it was in the clouds.  Mount Ngauruhoe was the volcano that acted as Mount Doom.  I don't think I saw that one either, but it's hard to say.  I have a picture of a definite volcanic cone, but there are 3 volcanoes there.  I think the picture I have is actually of Mount Tongariro.  But like I said, it was very cloudy and I never caught more than a slight glimpse of anything.

Tawhai Falls (aka the Forbidden Pool) in Tongariro National Park

Upon arrival at the park, I stopped by Tawhai Falls.  This is where The Forbidden Pool scenes were done for LOTR.  The scenes of Gollum down at the base of a waterfall, with Faramir threatening to shoot him for being in the Forbidden Pool, and Frodo saying "This creature is bound to me," to convince Faramir not to.  Movie magic makes the falls seem a lot larger than they actually are.  But the water surrounding them is amazingly clear and nice.

The Lower Taranaki Falls

After stopping by Tawhai Falls, I went up to the Whakapapa Visitor Center.  From there I settled on a 2 hr long hike to Taranaki Falls.  The hike took you through some of the brush and then into forests that were missed by earlier eruptions of Ruapehu.  Then you get to a lower falls (which I thought were the destination at first, but as I continued around the loop I realized I was wrong).  Eventually a little ways further along you get to the big Tarankai Falls.  I made it there about 2 minutes before a class of teenage school boys appeared, stripped down to their shorts and jumped in the pool at the base of the falls.  So then I waited for them to clear out so I could get some more pictures.  From there I continued up and around back toward the Visitor Center.

Taranaki Falls

From the Visitor Center, I took my car up to the ski resort on the side of the mountain, in hopes of seeing some of Mordor, but the resort was closing for the day, so I couldn't get to the actual filming site.  I settled for some of the lava rock fields in the vicinity.  After making my way back down the mountain, I headed towards my bed for the night.  As I was driving, I made the decision that I was moving on a day early.  Originally I had planned for 2 days at Tongariro, and I probably would have been fine doing one more day there, but the weather was looking to be poor, meaning rain and clouds.  I decided instead to leave and make my way to Wellington.

New Zealand countryside

On the way to Wellington, I pulled into Waitarere Beach, to take in the beach!  It had been raining off and on all drive, and when I arrived at the beach it was in an off phase.  I wandered out there to the water and stuck my feet in just to my ankles.  At that level the water seemed lukewarm to moderately warm.  I suppose in part because it was a Thursday and kids are still in school and the weather wasn't great, I ended up on the beach alone until an old, stoop-shouldered man in red swimming trunks ran out to the water and hopped in.  After about 15-20 minutes, the rain turned back on so I turned to head back to the car.

Waitarere Beach

I also stopped by Otaki River Gorge.  Not much to say there except there was a lot of water flowing, and I was glad I had rented an small SUV instead of car as the gravel roads would have made me a bit nervous on a lower wheelbase.

Otaki River Gorge

I continued my drive south to Wellington in pouring rain.  The Wellington area is very hilly.  I hadn't realized that.  A lot of the houses have that San Francisco look too, so between the hills and the houses, it is almost like San Francisco.  It also seems to have a lot less skyscrapers than Auckland, which surprised me.  Maybe it's the terrain, or maybe this part of the country is more earthquake prone, so they build shorter.  For the record, Wellington is actually the capital of New Zealand, not Auckland.  They consider Auckland to be the financial capital.

Since I had been planning to stay up at Tongariro for a second day, I didn't actually have a hotel booked in Wellington, so I just headed to where I had booked for my night the following day, and asked if they happened to have a room available, and the good news was they did!  So I am able to stay in the same room for two nights in Wellington before taking the ferry across the strait to the South Island.

Recognize that tree behind Merry?

After getting the room figured out, I set out for what seems to be called the Mount Victoria Town Belt.  Basically it is a park, up on a ridge.  So why set out for this park, other than it is always nice to go to a city park?  Lord of the Rings, of course!  This whole trip is a LOTR Pilgrimage!  The scenes in The Fellowship of Ring including the four hobbits' fall to the shortcut to mushrooms continuing to where Frodo yells for everyone to "Get off the road!" because the Nazgul are coming were shot in this park.  There were at least 4 other people on the pilgrimage, so I wasn't alone.  There are also some scenes from the extended edition with Frodo smoking in a tree and then him and Sam camping out before they cross paths with Merry and Pippin, which were shot in the park.  The big tree the 4 hide under when the Nazgul arrive was a prop so it doesn't actually exist, but I found trees that are movie stars in the area.

The spot where the hobbits hide from the Nazgul minus the tree and roots.

I then went wandering for some supper.  I ate at a great Italian place and then got to get wet walking back to the hotel in the rain, because of course I forgot to grab my raincoat when leaving for supper.

This morning I got up and headed for Weta Workshop, where they built the props and prosthetics for Lord of the Rings and a 150 other films, including some Marvel films and the Chronicles of Narnia.  They have loads of old props sitting around, but you also get to look into the workshop where they are working on props for new films.  Some of what they do is actual metalwork, like real swords, but others are plastic replicas because they don't want the nice swords getting too dinged up while shooting, and they're a lot heavier.  A lot of the chainmail they used for LOTR was actually plastic because real chainmail is heavy.  But there was one actor who requested to shoot in proper chainmail...give you one guess as to who that was.  They also had the actual Sauron costume there, and it is huge!  They had two swords on display from the live action Mulan, which they worked on.  One was the actual sword used for most of the film, while the other was a larger, super-polished one so they could get Mulan's reflection in them (it doesn't surprised me that Mulan used Weta, because the director of that film is a Kiwi).  Overall the workshop tour was neat because they did a good job of explaining what sort of work they do and why.  Also, no pictures in most of the Workshop, so I don't have much to show.

After the tour, I headed to the coast of the peninsula that Weta Worshop sits on.  There is a trail leading up to some old bunkers from the early 1900s.  Prior to the English arriving, it was used as Maori fortifications because they too, realized it was the perfect spot to keep an eye on people coming into the harbor.

After dropping my car back off at the hotel, I walked along the waterfront before cutting over to take the cable car to the top of another park.  But first I had to stop by a money exchange because about a month ago, Capital One switched my debit card for my checking account to being Discover-based instead of Mastercard-based, and guess what doesn't work here?  Discover, of course, because it's not accepted anywhere despite what their ads say.  Knowing this might be a possibility I brought some US cash to exchange.  I don't know how much I'll need it, but it will likely be necessary for doing laundry and if I want some fresh fruit from the roadside.

Busy going up, not so busy going down.

But after doing that, I took the cable car up to the top and took a nice, long, slow walk through the Wellington Botanical Garden.  The gardens aren't so much like Botanica, but a lot of native plants making a sort of wild garden.

Wellington Botanical Garden

Today is Friday here, meaning of course that it is Black Friday.  Except they don't do Thanksgiving here, so Black Friday doesn't exist, right?  Wrong!  Everywhere is having Black Friday sales, except they seem to mostly be running from Thursday to Monday or Friday to Monday.  Funny!