Exploring Middle Earth

Now that my blog is alive again, there are a number of things I have to talk about. But first, I thought I might share most recent adventure, a trip to Wellington to Tour some Lord of the Rings sites.

When I was applying to study abroad, the coordinator said that you had to have a good reason to go where we want to go, and she specifically used the example that you couldn’t go to New Zealand just because you are a fan of Lord of the Rings. I was even required to write an essay about how I was not coming to New Zealand for Lord of the Rings. It’s true, I do have important reasons of my own for coming, reasons like personal development and broadening perspectives.

But on the other hand, I am a huge fan of Lord of the Rings. The front covers are worn off my books, and the first page is also worn off some of them. Adding of wear and tear to the many sets of Lord of the Rings books at my house was a job that my parents began and I have been happy to continue. I, like every other nerd, half-nerd, geek, and sane person out there loved the Peter Jackson movies as soon as they came out. So while I have legitimate reasons to be in New Zealand besides LotR, I was not about to pass up an opportunity to see some of the sites from the movies.

The main movie industry in New Zealand is based out of Wellington, and so that is where we travelled to last weekend. There were six of us who went, all Americans studying abroad except for guy who is from China. We hired a car in Palmy and drove down. I was the one who put the money down and signed for the car, so I did the majority of the driving. On the left side. That was scary.

We got to Wellington, checked into our hostel, and went to explore the Te Papa museum. Among the neat things at the museum was the only captured remains of a Colossal Squid. After Te Papa we drove to the top of Mount Victoria where we got a great view of the entire area. We could have climbed Mount Victoria on foot but we did not quite have the time to do that. We also were looking for a specific turnoff in the road where you can take a short hike in to find the place where they filmed the scene of the hobbits hiding from the Ring Wraith in the woods, but we didn’t have enough time that evening to find it. There were a number of Shire scenes filmed in the Mount Victoria Park. It is rather astonishing that Hobbiton Woods is in actuality a just a city park inside Wellington.

Anyway, that night we got back to our hostel. There was a rugby match on and New Zealand was playing England there in Wellington. We were going to find somewhere to watch the match but then found out that it was a Rugby League match instead of a Rugby Union one. The difference between League and Union is kind of like the difference between Arena Football and normal Football.

The next morning we met up with our tour guide who would show us around to various filming sites. We travelled out of Wellington and first stopped at a large quarry, also known as Helms Deep, also known as Minas Tirith. All of it has since been taken down. Then we travelled to a city park that was used for the outdoor shots of Isengard. You could just barely tell that some of the trees in the background were the same when you saw still frames of the movies. We got to see some other sites such as where Aragorn is washed ashore after falling from the cliff, and then we went to Rivendell.

Or what is left of Rivendell. When the filmmakers built the set, they moved all of the plants to a greenhouse nearby, built Rivendell, filmed there, took Rivendell down, and then replanted every single plant exactly where they found it. Talk about commitment. Also, apparently when they were building the Rivendell set they were in such a hurry that when they finally did the actual filming, the production crews had to instruct the actors not to touch certain parts of the set because the paint was still wet.

Once we returned to Wellington we went to the Weta Cave, connected to Weta Studios which produces all of the props for Peter Jackson. They are the ones responsible for all the handmade armor and weapons in Lord of the Rings, as well as a lot of other work.

We left Weta Cave, had an adventure getting lost in Wellington, finally found our way to the main motorway, and then returned to Palmerston North so that I could get a full night of studying in. I had my first final that tuesday. Pictures from this latest trip are here.

It LIVESSSSS!!!

It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. Well, ok, no one could call a day as beautiful as today dreary, nor is it November quite yet, but the words of Mary Schelley in Frankenstein are apt to describe the resurrection of my blog. It’s been almost two months, but now it’s back.

And when I say back, I absolutely mean it. I’ll explain why I didn’t blog for seven weeks soon, but all you have to know is that my blog is back. And I will be updating it every day for the next several days. So add it to your routine now. Tell your kids. Tell your husbands. Tell your wives. And you dog.

First the question of why haven’t I been blogging. Anything I say after this point is going to be pretty much BS because in all honesty, I’m not entirely sure myself. But nonetheless we still ask, why?

This question begins at the end of the mid-semester break. I spent two weeks of break travelling the North Island. When I arrived back on a Saturday night, I had two lab reports due on Monday which I had not started writing. That wasn’t some oversight, I just was busy with a lot of other work until I left for my trip, and then I had everything to do when I got back. And things continued basically in that manner for the whole rest of the semester. I always had very large portions of work on the horizon.

But making a blog entry doesn’t take too long, just an hour here, and hour there, you should have time for it? Well not in my head, and that’s because I had a lot of pictures to upload. I have since learned that there is a link at the bottom of Facebook albums that allow you to share them with everyone despite privacy settings. But prior to figuring that out, I believed that I would be required to take the time to upload all of the photos I wanted to share in my blog to Photobucket, and then format all those so that it wouldn’t take up all the space on my Photobucket account. It did not seem seem to me that I had time to do that, and I did not want to add photo uploading and formatting to my already-long to-do list.

The other reason that I haven’t updated is that I simply have not gotten out of Palmy (Palmerston North) again until last weekend. I had a few cancelled trips, and a few weekends in, and a few weekends with some good friends I have made here. But nothing that seemed urgent enough for me to make a blog post about. I will tell all about the actual content of my time in the next couple days. Finally last weekend I travelled down to Wellington to tour some Lord of the Rings sites, and it has given me sufficient reason to start making updates again.

Sky Tower

The final subject for today is that I left you guys hanging in my last blog post. I was still in Auckland in my mid-semester trip. Here goes the conclusion. The next day in Auckland we went to the Zoo. We were going to go to this volcanic Island in the middle of the harbor but instead all of us were feeling tired because of a cold that was going around, so we didn’t have the motivation to get up in the morning. That night we decided to splurge and go have dinner up in the sky tower, which is like a cooler version of the Space Needle. It is also the tallest building in the southern hemisphere. Afterwards we went to see Inception at the Imax theater.

Group photo in the Bay of Islands.
From left to right: Marty, Hannah,
Myself, Jackie 

The next morning we got up and took the bus up to Northlands and the Bay of Islands. That was pretty freakin cool. It is a bay of around 200 islands and it had warm and sunny beaches. The first day we had a lazy afternoon and I went kayaking. The next day we took a boat tour around, and got to see the famous hole in the rock island. Our boat actually went through the hole. We were supposed to get to see dolphins in our tour, and since we did not see any they gave us all a free voucher to come back and take the tour again. I’ll use it if I ever come back this way in my life.

Famous hole in the rock

That day was my birthday. It was also the last day that Hannah would be with us. She was studying in Christchurch and had to fly back the next day, so she had to get up the next morning and take a bus back to Auckland. When she left in the morning I found myself quite sad because I knew I would probably never see Hannah again. The rest of us, Jackie, Marty, and myself, continued on to take a bus up to explore the northernmost parts of New Zealand. The bus drove 

Ninety Mile Beach

up the beach along Ninety-Mile Beach, and then turned inland so that we could go sand boarding on the dunes. I got to see the Tasman Sea for the first time. Afterwards we continued up to Cape Reinga. The Maori believe that Hine-nui-te-Po guards the Cape Reiga and from there sends souls out to the underworld. Cape Reinga was breathtaking because overlooked the place where the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea meet in a tumultuous cacophony of wind and waves. It had that sort of grey ocean air blowing in your face that years of going to Ocean Park has made me appreciate.

Cape Reinga

After that we bused back to Auckland. The next morning we got up bright and early and spent the entire day on a bus back to Palmerston North. Now, as promised here are pictures. If you are my friend on facebook you have probably seen these already, but if not, here they are. Part 1. Part 2.


I will tell all about my other experiences here in the days to come.