Since I was in Lord of the Rings country I figured I may as well treat myself to a tour of the filming locations around Wellington, often called Wellywood by the locals due to the massive impact the film industry has in the area post LOTR. I was being picked up at 8.40 so it was almost a sleep in! I left my entire dorm asleep and went to wait outside reception for my pickup…which still hadn't arrived by 9am prompting a phone call to the office who said I hadn't been written down on the roster. Say what?! Well that was upsetting to say the least, I'd been looking forward to seeing some of the filming locations. But wait, what's that?! Never fear I was booked into the afternoon trip instead, I have a feeling Nathan in the office was about to get a rollicking! Since my morning plans were scuppered I decided to continue on a theme and go visit the Weta cave, the local Peter Jackson co-founded film effects studio over in Miramar. Now Weta did the special effects for Lord of the Rings, such as the computer rendering of Gollum as well as the model building, armour and weapon creation, make up, costumes and other things I can't remember. The Weta cave is like a mini museum with props from the films they have worked on - such as King Kong, Avatar, District 9, Narnia Prince Caspian and Lord of the Rings amongst others. It was interesting and I enjoyed looking around, but then I love all that kind of thing. Some of the collectibles they have are absolutely spectacular, the detail is unbelievable and they are made by the same people who created the miniature models for filming and stuff like that so I suppose they deserve the pretty hefty price tag a lot of them have. I was surprised to find out that Weta brings in more revenue to New Zealand than the wine industry, who'd have thought?!

I had to be back in the city for half 1 so jumped on the bus and decided I'd spend a bit of time in the library and see if anything exciting was going on. It wasn't inside, but outside was something unexpected. Now I'd been seeing kids in school uniforms wandering around all morning, strange as it was a Saturday, and as I walked into the Civic centre it turned out they were part of this 'big sing' school choir concert thing that evening, and they were filming some kind of singalong introduction in the centre. I stood and watched for about five minutes, half expecting Gareth Malone to rock up but alas he was nowhere to be seen. I couldn't help but think that we wouldn't get school choirs like the ones they had there at home, but I do think they might have been private schools seeing some of the uniforms.

Now onto my trip, once I was finally picked up! There was only me and this slightly peculiar boy called Peter from the US but with Russian parents so a bit of a jumbled accent. He was nice but I think a bit shy, and had only seen the first LOTR film so I'm not sure how useful he found the tour but each to his own! Out first stop was up on Mount Victoria where they filmed a lot of the scenes of the hobbits escaping Hobbiton through the woods. The tour was good in that they showed you images of the same areas so you can recognize them in the films since the sets are long gone and you only have your imagination to bring the areas to life. From there we went to have a look at the quarry which was used to build sets for Minas Tirith and Helms Deep. Now these were a real stretch of the imagination as the impressive sets that were built are obviously no longer there and it is once again a fully operational quarry. Apparently the sets there took 11 months to build, and were probably only filmed in for a few months before being destroyed. Then it was onto the Upper Hutt region and Harcourt Park which stood in for Isengard, the home of Saruman. They had to bring in trees from other places and hinge them so they could be pulled down by the Orcs so the locals didn't kick off at them destroying trees in the park. Haha. You could see where they had created a path for Gandalf to leg it down on his horse, probably the only clue that the area was used as a lot of computer wizardry (bad pun intended) was used to insert mountains in the background and the tower of Isengard itself. Our last stop was Rivendell, or at least the park it was filmed in, where I got to put on some elf ears and swish a sword about a bit, feeling slightly embarrassed but enjoying myself all the same. After a muffin and some lemonade it was back to the hostel to chill out for the remainder of the evening.

A few things struck me today so I created a list, mainly for my own benefit, but I've put it here in case it's of interest!

Things I like about New Zealand

• The accent
• Having your bags packed at the supermarket
• The hilarious school uniforms
• The mountains
• Lord of the Rings everything
• Beached Az
• Huge amount of dog statues

Things I'm not so keen on

• The price of food - ouch
• Nearly being knocked over by skateboarders
• People not giving up their seat on the bus for old people
• Lack of free wifi

Becca