Our first stop was the library, situated on the adjacent street (50 meters from the hostel). I spent 40 minutes updating my blog. The parking limit was an hour, so once again we drove over one street (approx. 40 meters) where we stopped at the bakery for breakfast.
We had booked the 1:15pm ferry because we had planned to have breakfast with Stew’s mum in Blenheim. Unfortunately we hadn’t informed her about our breakfast plans and when we called she was busy and couldn’t make it.
In the bakery I told Mom that I wasn’t really interested in hanging around Picton for another three hours. She suggested that we drive to the ferry terminal to see if there was an earlier sailing that we could catch. So, we got into the car and drove over.
At the ticket counter the woman explained that the 10am sailing was late (it was 10:20am) and that if we could arrange tickets, check in our luggage, and settle the rental car with Hertz within 5 minutes we could catch that sailing. There was no way we could do all of that so quickly so we resigned ourselves to travelling on the 1:15pm ferry.
The ticket counter woman recommended that we check in our luggage for the 1:15pm sailing so we didn’t have to carry it around with us. Great idea, we thought. We walked back to the car and I drove it around to the entrance. We unloaded our bags and wheeled them to the luggage check in counter.
The woman at the luggage check in counter explained that the 10am sailing wouldn’t be leaving for another 15 minutes and suggested we try to catch that sailing. I can barely remember what happened next. I think I went back to the car and parked it, then dropped off the key at the Hertz counter. In the meantime Mom got tickets and checked in our luggage. Then we were upstairs in the boarding lounge and walking on to the ferry.
We settled into seats in the Foc’sle Lounge and stared at each other in shock. We’d never departed a place in such a hurry and with such uncertainty. We wondered if we’d removed everything from the car and if it was okay to just drop off the key at the counter. Eventually we had to just shrug and assume that everything would be alright.
We met a nice Australian woman who was looking for a block of four seats. We got chatting and the next thing you know 45 minutes had passed. Her mother came by to find out where she was, which was funny when you realized the woman was in her 50s and her Mom was in her 70s. Moms will be Moms.
The rest of the sailing was quite boring. The ship was huge but the services were quite limited. There was the Foc’sle Lounge, a very small café (that wasn’t being patronized, which tells you something about the quality of the food), a video game room, a small room with four desks for computer users, two TV rooms, and that’s it. You could walk around the decks, and many people spent the 4-hour voyage doing laps.
We arrived in Wellington at 3pm and our luggage, having been loaded at the last minute, was the first to be unloaded. We quickly grabbed our luggage and found a cab. Our cabbie was a woman, possibly of Polynesian descent, who had been to Canada. We chatted a lot about her trip on the way to the hostel.
The hostel in Wellington is like a hotel. It’s very clean and modern and has magical things called elevators. Most of the facilities are on the first and second floors. The hostel also has a very grumpy old hostel cat named Thomas, who didn’t seem to like being petted. Perhaps I’ve just lost the touch after so much time away from our cats.
We settled into our room then went outside to enjoy the sunshine. We walked down Wakefield Street and discovered Manners Mall, a pedestrian-only shopping area. Mom ordered flowers for Christine, then we continued our stroll over to Lambton Quay. We had explored that area a bit on our previous visit, but our memories were of a dark and depressing street and people rushing from one place to another in the rain. This time, the sun was shining and the street had a completely different aspect. The architecture was stunning, we noticed all kinds of public artwork, the people were happily shopping and stopping to talk to friends.
We walked down Lambton Quay to Waring Taylor Street, where we stopped for coffee and a snack. Then we headed back toward Manners Mall. On the map I’d noticed another pedestrian mall on Cuba Street, adjacent to Manners Street. We found it easily and enjoyed walking up the street. I’d read that Cuba Street was full of restaurants and bars but didn’t notice any until we got close to Vivian Street. I also noticed that the restaurants and bars were somewhat seedy and populated mostly by unkempt men.
We turned around and headed back down Cuba Street. I had noticed a small Malaysian restaurant on the way up the street and we stopped to read the menu. The food looked excellent and the prices were amazingly cheap. We walked in and bumped into the Australian woman that we’d met on the ferry. She was with her two sisters and her Mom. It was the strangest coincidence.
We ordered mee goreng and nyonya chicken, plus some roti and rice. The total was NZ$22. We were expecting two small plates but instead the proprietess arrived with two gigantic plates heaped with food. We dug in and it was fantastic! We couldn’t finish it, of course, so the proprietess brought over two take-away containers. We happily scooped the remaining food into the containers, anticipating having it for dinner the next night.
We walked back to the hostel along Dixon Street and Courtenay Place. We discovered that Courtenay Place was chock-a-block with restaurants and bars. Unfortunately those restaurants and bars were also chock-a-block with people cutting loose. It would be a great place to hang out with friends, but not really the place you go with your Mom.
We stopped at New World to buy some breakfast fixings. It was absolutely crazy inside the store. You could barely walk down the aisles because they were choked with buggies. It took nearly 20 minutes to get through the check-out counter. We’d been told that the shops would be closed over the weekend but didn’t anticipate the grocery store closing. I guess everyone was stocking up on food and booze for the weekend, thus the craziness.
We hung out in our room at the hostel for a bit then called Piripi. He had emailed to say that he was working until around 8:30pm. He didn’t pick up on the first call, but picked up on the second call. He invited us over for tea so I asked how we could get there by bus. It was too far to travel by bus so he drove all the way into town and met us by the hostel.
The quieter cafés beside the hostel were closing so we went to the hostel dining room to chat. We had really hoped to chat about Maori culture and history but somehow the conversation turned to travel and we spent most of the night talking about other stuff. At 11pm we said our goodbyes. Piripi had to get up at 6am to catch a flight to Gisborne. He was heading home to Whangara for the Easter weekend. We thanked him for taking the time to meet us and we gave him some blackberry port and smoked salmon that we’d brought from home. He said he’d probably tuck into the salmon as soon as he got home!
We got up early on Friday because we had booked the Rover Ring Tour, and the van was going to swing around to the hostel at 8:40am to pick us up. It was gorgeous and sunny again and we hoped that we’d get another warm day for the tour.
Our tour guide, Nathan, pulled up promptly at 8:40am. He was a tall, gregarious guy and I immediately liked him. There were already four other people in the van – a young student from the U.S., a middle-aged couple from England wearing LOTR shirts, and a woman about my age from Toronto. We drove around the block and stopped.
Nathan asked if he knew why we were stopping. Well, turns out we were on Courtenay Place and could see a theatre at Courtenay and Cambridge Terrace. The world premier of Return of the King had been screened at that theatre, and Courtenay Place had been transformed to a red carpet reception area for the premier. Over 150,000 people showed up to the premier, which is about 1/3 of Wellington’s population.
From there we drove to the top of Mt. Victoria for a 360 degree view of Wellington. Nathan pointed out the Mirimar Peninsula where we’d be spending a good part of the morning. Then we drove down the hill to an entrance to the Town Belt park. We parked and hiked about 10 minutes into the park. There we found the places where they’d filmed the hobbits falling down the hill and finding mushrooms, the famous “Get off the road!” scene, and the race to the ferry.
Mushrooms/get off the road:
Nazgul silhouette:
From the park we drove to the Mirimar Peninsula, past Peter Jackson’s house, to the Chocolate Fish Café. Peter Jackson rented houses along the street next to his for most of the stars and many of them hung out at the Chocolate Fish Café. You can only get there by car – no buses travel there – so we parked and got out to enjoy a coffee and snacks in the sunshine.
The cafe:
Waiters crossing:
We also drove by the old Army barracks (now a toney suburb) where they had weapons training and built the town of Bree. Not much is left except the field.
We drove back past Peter’s house and deep into the ‘burbs to Weta Workshop, located on Camperdown Street. There is a huge sign saying Camperdown Studios and a little tiny sign saying Weta Workshop. It’s the most nondescript building you can imagine. Nathan explained that on work days most of the windows are open and you can see people working on props and sets. Unfortunately the windows were closed because most of the staff were away enjoying the Easter weekend.
Camperdown Studios/Weta Workshop:
We drove a few blocks away to another nondescript building, slightly more modern, in which Peter Jackson built the biggest post-production editing studio in the southern hemisphere following LOTR. We also drove around the corner from that to the studio where they do a lot of sound-stage filming. The studio is an old paint factory located next to the airport, and Nathan explained that 95% of the scenes filmed there had to be fixed up to remove the noise of the airplanes and the traffic.
The film studio:
Our next stop was the Dry Creek Quarry where they build Helm’s Deep and Minas Tirith. Apparently Peter Jackson asked the quarry owners how much it would cost for them to stop production there for a year, they gave him a crazy figure, he wrote a check, and Peter had himself a quarry. They actually blew up the Deeping Wall at Helm’s Deep with dynamite because, being a quarry, they were allowed to blow stuff up for real.
Dry Creek Quarry/Helm's Deep/Minas Tirith:
We drove from there to Kaitoke Regional Park where they filmed scenes for Rivendell. We had a picnic lunch then walked around the park for 30 minutes. Nathan met us at the end of the walk and showed us the tiny 20-meter area where they filmed all of Rivendell. It’s literally a small bit of path next to a creek. Amazing.
The rabid LOTR fans (Rowena, Claire, Steve, Dave, & Mary-Jane):
Rivendell...seriously:
Rowena, elf-maid:
Our final stop was a city park where they filmed Isengard. Again, you could pick out a couple of trees and got a general sense that the area had been Isengard. Nathan pointed out two depressions in the ground where they’d built trees for the Orcs to pull down. Apparently they used two real tree stumps and added branches and leaves to create the trees because by law you can’t cut down any trees in the parks. They rebuilt the trees, using a different configuration of branches and leaves, for every shot.
We were exhausted by then and happy with the tour. We chatted about the film on the way back to town. The funny thing was that in the morning Nathan had asked us to rate, from 1 to 10, how big of a fan we were. I said I was a 7. It turns out I was the one spouting out LOTR facts all day long. Whenever Nathan asked a question I knew the answer, or could sort of guess the answer. So, we joked that we’d have to shift my rating from 7 to 11.
We had a quiet dinner of left-over Malaysian food. It was just as good as the day before. We started watching the movie Sideways but were so tired that we went to sleep at 7:45pm.
Today we’re going to Te Papa Museum. Fortunately they opened a special LOTR exhibition there yesterday, so it’s the first place we’ll go to. Then we’ll explore the exhibits about Maori culture and history, and as many other exhibits as we can.
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