I got up early on the morning of the 21st (the one month point of my travels) and I headed to the ferry terminal. My ferry was set to leave at 7:45, but I had to be there no later than 1 hour earlier. My alarm was set for 6, but I was up before that (the classic fear of oversleeping meant I underslept). I had showered the night before so literally all I would need to do was put on my clothes and pack away my PJs. I was at my spot in the holding line by 6:20. The ferry back to the North Island wasn't even close to as busy as the one I took on the was down. I'm sure that probably had more to do with time than anything. The good news was my car was on a lower deck and protected, so I didn't have a brine covered car when I got back to it after arrival.
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| Heading into the passenger area after parking my car. |
I had decided that I had already hit everything in Wellington before I headed to the South Island, so I headed straight out of town. My plan for the day was to hit a number of LOTR filming spots on my way north, and see how far I got.
The first stop was a river that played the role of both the River Anduin and the Rohan River in the films. Now that I'm back here on the North Island, I've noticed the difference in rivers, as in the ones up here are not glacier fed, and don't have that milky quality to them that a lot of the rivers on the South Island have. I'll have to be looking for that on my next LOTR viewing.
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| Harcourt Park LOTR filming a location. |
The next spot wasn't too much further up the road. Here at Harcourt Park they filmed the Isengard Garden scenes. The ones where Gandalf and Saruman are walking together, talking about The Ring. It is also where they filmed the scenes with the Uruk-hai pulling down trees. They didn't actually pull down real trees in the park, but they did dig giant holes and pull down uprooted dying trees from elsewhere with painted leaves on them. My guidebook actually has the coordinates for where the trees were and it was sort of like looking for a geocache. There were two other non-LOTR things about this park that were unique. 1) They had multiple orienteering course there, so if you had a compass, you could have some fun. 2) They had a child's bike/scooter course that was like a city with stop and yield signs, and exit ramps and such. There was a kid with a scooter having fun there.
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| See, isn't that fun? |
From Harcourt Park, I went up the road like 15 minutes to Kaitoke Regional Park. It was in this park that they filmed Rivendell scenes. They had pieces they brought in, though the wide fantastical shots were done with a miniature and so they weren't actually shot there. But it is the location for where they shot the scenes between Bilbo and Frodo, and others that took place outdoors on the walkways (not the council scenes). There is an archway there now that is Elvish in nature, but wasn't actually in the films. It was put there after as a tribute to the film. This was actually the first filming location outside of Hobbiton that advertises that it was a filming location as there were signs pointing to "Rivendell" in the park. After I visited the Rivendell site at the park, I walked a trail through the woods and across a swinging bridge to get some steps under my belt for the day.
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| That tree in the middle can be seen in Rivendell scenes (obviously the others around can be too, but that one is obvious because of its size). |
After that, I drove and drove. I had been aiming for a hiking trail at Manuwatu Gorge outside of Palmerston North, but realized that I wasn't going to get there until about 5:15 and it was going to be a 3 or so hour hike and I really wasn't up for hiking that late after getting up early and not sleeping great. So instead I went into Palmerston North, got a hotel, and got up the following morning to go hike the Manuwatu Gorge Trail.
As I was traveling north I also had a decision to make. Do I take the turn to Napier or continue north and head past the back side of Tongariro National Park. I stopped at Tongariro like 3 days into my trip, but due to poor weather, I left early and headed to Wellington. Well, now the weather looked like it was going to be good and going by there meant seeing Mount Doom! On the other hand, there is a well known National Aquarium at Napier (have you ever seen the posts about the Good Penguin of the Week and the Naughty Penguin of the Week...that's that aquarium). I had the morning while I hiked to think about what direction I wanted to head.
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| Manuwatu Trail |
The Manuwatu Trail was honestly a lot more forest and less gorge than I had been expecting, but I liked the trail. As I head further north though, the humidity is increasing. It really makes you miss the cool hikes of Mount Cook. On this trail, partway in was a giant statue representing an important Maori figure and adventurer from the early days of the Maori. Upon finishing the hike I got some amazing passionfruit-honey ice cream at an ice cream hut down in the parking lot. Definitely will be searching for more of that! Also, I feel that all hiking trails need an ice cream hut. Shaved ice hut would work too (I used shaved ice as an incentive for finishing a trail in Hawaii years ago).
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| A northern rata tree. The northern rata grows from the top down. Their seeds usually germinate in the canopy of other trees and then they start dropping roots down, which eventually wrap up the tree host tree (which is usually already dying anyways). |
After leaving the Manuwatu Trail, I made the decision to head north instead of east to Napier. This meant stopping at one more LOTR site that I otherwise would have not passed (honestly I have missed many, either due to them not being reachable by normal means, or not being near the route I'm taking). This one was another river gorge used for the River Anduin (there were actually 4 rivers used for the one river and I think I've hit them all). I was not expecting the gorge at all. I hit the bridge (one of the many 1 lane bridges in this country) and shocked as I drove over it. I parked at the far side and walked onto the bridge to look down probably 70 feet to the water below, with straight walls up the sides.
With what was likely the last LOTR spot visited, I headed north towards the backside of Tongariro. This side of Mount Ruapehu is used as an Army training ground so there aren't any trails or roads through that area. One pulloff I took, said do not leave the road as there may be unexploded ordinances in the area. OK! But I did pull off to get some pictures of Mount Ruapehu, when I could actually see all of it. And of Mount Ngauruhoe which was used as Mount Doom in LOTR. The mountain is a very classic cone volcano. 100% would not be surprised to see lava spewing out of the top of it. Mount Ngauruhoe was the most active New Zealand volcano of the 20th century, erupting 45 times. It has lay dormant though, since 1977.
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| Mount Ruapehu |
Just to the north of Tongariro National Park is Lake Taupo, the largest lake in New Zealand. The town of Taupo is also my home for the next two nights before I move onto Rotorua for Christmas.
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| Mount Ngauruhoe |
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