Day 327: Wellywood

New Zealand is well known for its beautiful scenery that's used in many tv shows and movies, most famously for Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit. It is also home to some of the best movie production and support companies in the world, and these companies are all clustered around Wellington, making it one of the top movie centers of the world. The most famous among them, and in large part the reason the city has developed such a reputation, is Weta. Weta began as a props/special effects company founded by Richard Taylor, Peter Jackson and Jamie Selkirk. In the beginning they did a lot of special effects for gory horror movies and the Hercules and Xena TV shows, but now they're the premier company in the business, having spread to digital effects, statues and figurines and being famous for their work on films like Lord of the Rings, King Kong, Chronicles of Narnia, Avatar, Tin Tin, Planet of the Apes (the new one), and so on.

There's a point in talking about all this, as my goal for the day was to visit the Weta Cave and Workshop. I made something of a mistake in walking to the place instead of taking the bus. It's technically not in Wellington but in Miramar, and while it didn't look too far on the map, the route I took along the coast ended up taking quite awhile and was made more unpleasant by the sun and heat. I'm pretty stubborn about walking places once I start though, and eventually made it to my goal.

The Weta Cave is a wonderland of props, reproductions, figurines and general film nerd-dom. It's a shop for the studio, and while the stuff is mostly way out of my price range it's still extremely cool to see. They also have a little theater showing a film about the company and the films it has worked on.

For the 20th anniversary of the company they also have been running special tours into the workshop. The tours are done by members of the actual props/special effects staff. They can't show what they're developing for new movies, but they walk you through how each of the different departments work and tell lots of stories about the things they've created for past films. There's also tons of weapons, models, figurines and all manner of weird props covering just about every inch of wall and ceiling space. Sadly the tour didn't allow photos, but you can get a general idea of the sort of things from the Cave pictures.

I decided to walk back to the hostel, but instead of following the coast I cut through the tunnel under the mountain which made it a much shorter walk.

Days 325-326: Wellington

I had a few more places I wanted to visit on the north island, but the timing was going to work out better to do it on my way back up to Auckland to fly out, so I decided to move on down to Wellington for a few days before crossing over to the south island. My bus out of Rotorua left in the afternoon so it was already pretty late in the day when I got into Wellington and found my hostel. Wellington itself is a lovely city. It's a lot smaller than Auckland, but still large enough to have lots to do. The city center stretches out near the water with the city spreading over the surrounding hills, and there are lots of little artsy places spread through town. My hostel was just across the street from the city art gallery, but unfortunately half of it was closed down and the other half was pretty dull. Much more interesting was the museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa. A lot of the exhibits in it were on New Zealand history and nature, which were things I didn't really know very much about. Completely unrelated to all that, was this giant sculpture.

This is one of the works by Weta, which is probably the most famous props/special effect companies in the world. More on them later! Since it was a nice day out I was mostly just happy to wander through town and explore without any real direction.

Day 324: Thermal Wonderland

With one more day in Rotorua and nothing really to do in town I decided to do a daytrip out to Wai-O-Tapu, which is a park of thermal pools outside of town. In the end it might not have been the best choice since it was pretty overpriced for what you got. The shuttle bus dropped us off and told us that it would pick us back up in 90 minutes, which really isn't a lot of time to explore a fairly large park which you've paid a fair bit of money to visit. I was hanging out with an Australian who I'd gotten to know the previous night during a bar trivia match and we managed to cover all the trails while chatting about random things, but we didn't really have time to stop and really explore.



As you can see, it's a pretty colourful place. The entire place smells of sulfur in varying degrees, and all the minerals bubbling out make the pools a rainbow. After we got back we went for a bit of a walk along the lake and through a nearby forest park, but for the most part the evening was pretty quiet.

Day 323: Trip to Middle-Earth

Around noon I got on a bus to take a trip over to Matamata to visit the Alexander sheep farm, which is a sprawling farm of rolling hills that houses over 12,000 sheep. Oh, (as if you didn't guess from the post title) it's also the home of the Shire movie sets (Hobbiton and The Green Dragon Inn) from Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. When Peter Jackson was looking for film locations prior to making Lord of the Rings he did a helicopter search of the surrounding farmlands, and took interest in the Alexander's farm because of rolling hills, lake and suitable party tree, background of mountains in the distance, and lack of any visable roads or power lines to deal with. The "set" is basically the entire town of Hobbiton in ridiculous detail, including branches of town that cost millions of dollars to build and ultimately got cut from the movies entirely.

In addition to getting to walk around all of Hobbiton, our guide told us lots of stories about the creation of Hobbiton and the challenges of filming. All these little anecdotes were a really cool addition, and I'll mention a few of the ones that I remember off the top of my head.
-The gnarled oak tree sitting on top of Bag End wasn't originally part of the farm. Instead, a tree for a nearby farm was numbered, chopped up and then wired back together on the set. Since the tree was obviously now dead, 250,000 fake oak leaves were imported from Taiwan and wired by hand onto the tree just before filming was supposed to begin. Unfortunately Peter Jackson fell sick and filming was delayed for a couple weeks. The weather had enough of an effect on the colour of the fake leaves that Peter Jackson sent people up to hand-paint all 250,000 leaves before they finally got around to filming it. The actual tree is maybe in the movies for 10 seconds. For The Hobbit they dismantled the old dead tree and used the parts to make casts for a more permanent replacement, which of course required wiring 250,000 more fake leaves onto the new version as well.
- Near the beginning of The Hobbit (very minor spoiler) there's a scene in Bag End when Gandalf bumps his head on a chandelier, then turns and bumps his head again on the door frame. Only the first of these was scripted, and Ian McKellen actually hurt himself on the second one. Peter Jackson thought it was hilarious and kept it in the movie.
- All the fruit trees on set are dwarf apple and pear varities, because they look more size appropriate than full-sized fruit trees. Unfortunately in the books the fruit trees in Hobbiton are described as being plum trees, so before filming every single fruit and leaf were removed from the trees, and plum leaves and fruit were attached in their place.
- For Bilbo's party and the Green Dragon scenes they came up with a special beer that tastes like normal beer, but is only 1% alcohol so that multiple takes wouldn't turn into a bunch of drunk hobbit actors stumbling around.
- In the scene in Lord of the Rings when Merry and Pippin steal Gandalf's fireworks, they used a small explosion to cue the actors for timing when it was going off. Billy Boyd (Pippin) was startled by the explosion and apparently let out an unscripted high-pitched squeal when it went off. Peter Jackson thought it was hilarious (this is a common trend) and kept it in the film.

After getting a tour around Hobbiton we crossed by the watermill and over the bridge to The Green Dragon Inn, where we got to lounge around and enjoy a free drink (real ones, not the 1% prop stuff).

Anyway, since this is what people really care about, here's pictures!

Day 322: Bay of Islands to Rotorua

This was another day of travel as I took the bus from Paihia, back down to Auckland and south through Hamilton to Rotorua. Rotorua is another rather touristy town (like apparently almost all towns in New Zealand). The main attraction in the area is all the thermal pools and hot springs, but it also has built something of an adventure tourism market with things like skydives, rock climbing and jumping in big clear plastic balls half full of water and rolling around obstacle courses.

The hostel I was in was really cool. It shared a building with a basement cinema and a rock climbing gym with big windows connecting the hostel lounge with the gym so you could look in as everybody was doing the climbing. The town itself was pretty quiet, but it was large enough to have quite a few shops, and it sits next to Lake Rotorua, so there were more nice water views.

By the time my bus got in it was too late to do much beyond explore town a bit and get dinner, but I was already making plans for what to do with my time there.

Day 321: Russell

In the morning I went up a short walk of the hill next to town and decided that there really wasn't all that much to do in Paihia. Most of the tourism draws involve boating, either by sailing out into the bay or going on fishing excursions, and neither of those were interesting enough for what it would cost me. Instead I took the ferry across part of the bay to visit the town of Russell. Russell was also small, but I spent an hour walking along the beach and shore and found a trail heading up into the forest. The area around here was protected kiwi grounds and I saw a handful of kiwis running about, although they were quite shy and none stuck around very long. The trail ultimately came out in a little neighborhood of maybe 10 houses completely cut off from everything else, and I had to follow along the road for awhile. Eventually I found another trail heading up to Flagstaff Hill (I think), which gave a nice lookout down at the town and over the bay.


After getting back down I had a late lunch and sat by the docks, watching the fishing parties come back with their catches. The day's winner? Definitely this guy.


That's an 82kg striped marlin, for those interested.

Eventually I took the ferry back to Paihia and spent most of the evening chatting with my roommates and just generally lounging around.

Day 320: Bay of Islands

I began my bus blitz around New Zealand heading up north to the costal town of Paihia on the Bay of Islands. I didn't really have a reason for doing this, but I wanted to go somewhere north first and people had told me it was a nice spot. I got into a lengthy chat with an American on the bus who had spent the last 3 years in India. He was travelling with one little bag that had all his personal things, and one large pack that contained mountain climbing gear that he carried everywhere. He'd spent the last month on the south island, so I got a lot of tips on some of the things to do when I got down that far.
I'm going to be spending a lot of time on buses in New Zealand, but luckily it's famous for some of the most beautiful scenery in the world, so at least there's something to see on the trips. The trip north was largely hilly grazing lands, but New Zealand is pretty amazing for how open and empty it is.

It was a nice sunny afternoon when we got to Paihia and the place is small enough that it only took a couple of minutes to get to my hostel and check in. I spent the last part of the afternoon checking out town and picking up some things to eat, but didn't try anything too adventurous.

Days 317-319: Auckland

I had an early morning flight out of Sydney, so I got to New Zealand with still quite a bit of time left in the day. My hostel wasn't as central as a lot of them have been, but despite being by far the largest city in New Zealand it's still pretty small by international standards, and walking around is pretty convenient. There really wasn't all that much I wanted to do in Auckland. It's just another city, and I'll be in it again to flight out anyway, so I spent my days there focused more on planning out other upcoming things. I bought a bus pass with Naked Bus, which is one of the discount coach bus lines in New Zealand. New Zealand has really nice intercity bus systems, and the bus pass I got gives me 17 rides from anywhere to anywhere in New Zealand (excluding crossing between islands as part of a trip) for about $180 CDN. I very much doubt I'll be able to use all 17 trips, but I'll definitely be using enough to make the pass worthwhile. I also bought a cheap New Zealand pay-as-you-go cell phone since it makes the bus stuff much, much easier, and it will help with some of the national park bookings I need to do.

I did manage to see a fair bit of Auckland just walking around when the weather was nice. It's art gallery, while not as large and impressive as the ones in Melbourne and Sydney still had a nice collection. The museum was pretty far away from the city center, and while I vaguely tried to find it once it apparently cost quite a bit to get in, and I wasn't interested enough to really pursue it when I couldn't find it easily. Auckland also has one of those sky tower things vaguely like the CN Tower that pretty much every country seems to have now.

Days 315-316: King's Cross

I took the train back to Sydney and switched lines to go to the King's Cross area, where my new hostel was. King's Cross is the sleazy part of Sydney with all the bars and strip clubs. It seems to be full of borderline homeless people, junkies and has by far the highest ratio of people who talk to themselves of any place I can remember staying. Despite all that, it was still a fairly nice hostel and the area feels perfectly safe. It just has...lots of character. There's lots of cheap restaurants around, and the fact that I'd already spent quite a bit of time exploring Syndey combined with my ordeal from Katoomba meant that I was happy to just stay close by the hostel and not really venture too far out. The rain was also still a constant issue. It would be clear for a few hours, then it would pour for 40 minutes, then clear up quickly again. It was infrequent enough that you could still go out in the dry periods, but I don't think it went more than a few hours without rain over the two days.

Lizards and Such

On my hikes I came across quite a few lizards, as well as one snake. Some of the pictures aren't the best, because things were often on the move (especially the snake) and I was respecting this tidbit of Australian animal lore: "If it looks dangerous, it can probably kill you. If it doesn't look dangerous, it can definitely kill you."

Day 314: The Price of a Story

This one is for the people who feel jealous of me travelling everywhere and think that it's all sunshine, rainbows and butterflies!

I mentioned that I had planned for a longer hike the day before but had wasted too much time, so I decided to get it another go, leaving earlier in the morning this time and skipping by all the side trails I'd already explored the day before. The weather was nice and I made good time down the stairs to the floor. I got a bit mixed up in Scenic World which is a kind of nature park that runs a cablecar up and down the cliff. There were a lot of tourists around, and the the branch off to the trail I wanted was somewhat hidden and I missed it, but I managed to backtrack to find it and only lost half an hour, so I still had lots of time.
The first section of the trail had been wiped out by a pretty massive rockslide maybe 10 years ago. Paths over, under and throw things have slowly regrown, but it's still a tricky section where metal poles mark where the path should be since you're just sliding along loose gravel slopes for some of it.

As you can possibly tell from those pictures, the weather wasn't quite as nice anymore. There was still quite a bit of blue sky, but it was starting to get overcast. I was already 3 hours into things though, and it had been overcast a few times in the past couple days and always blown over without any rain, so I decided to press on ahead. Past the rocky section was the forest, and this trail went on for a long time - around 9km. At the end if split off with one path continuing onto the Solitary Mountain and the other one heading uphill to a place called Ruined Castle, which was my target. Ruined castle isn't actually a ruined castle. It's a rock formation of big stones on the top of a hill, but it was a good distance away for what I wanted to do for a hike. I scrambled up the rocks for a lovely view, but the sky had turned from overcast to dark black clouds, the wind had picked up a lot and the temperature had dropped.

After a few minutes enjoying my perch I climbed down to start heading back, trying to get back to the cover of the forest before the rain inevitably hit. I hadn't even made it back to the main trail before the rain started, and then turned from spitting to a steady drizzle. When I got back to the trail I hid in a niche beneath a rock, hoping the rain would stop quickly. It did not. Instead rain turned to downpour and downpour turned into downpour + hail. Yes, I managed to get hailed on for about an hour in summer in Australia. My niche had given me some cover for the lighter rain, but with the wind and the pounding rain it didn't offer much cover anymore, so I got back on the path and dashed ahead, hoping for better cover. There wasn't really any better cover to be had, and soon I was almost soaked through. I did stop under the trunk of a fallen tree long enough to wrap my camera case and wallet in a plastic bag I had to hopefully keep them somewhat dry, but the rest of me was already so wet that there was no point in trying to avoid the rain any longer.

The staircase I was taking up this time was about halfway between where the rockslide had been and where the path had branched off to go up to Ruined Castle. The sign at the point where the path led off to the stairs warned "Stairs can be slippery when wet" but when I actually got to the stairs I found a 900-step waterfall leading up to cliff. That's probably a bit of an exaggeration, since there were a few dry stretches, but probably at least half of the stairs up were covered by water ranging from 5cm to maybe 20cm pouring all the way down. Since my shoes and socks were soaked already I didn't make much effort to avoid the water, and just trudged up through it all.

By the time I got to the top I'd probably been in the cold rain in a t-shirt for 3 hours. The rain had slowed a little when I got to the top, so I stopped to evaluate things and make sure my wallet and camera were still relatively dry. This is when I discovered the leeches. I had 6 or 7 leeches on my legs and ankles which probably came from walking through the water up the stairs, as well as one on each arm, that I'm not quite so clear on. In Indonesia I had been told that leeches climb up trees and onto leaves and then when it rains it knocks them off the leaves onto things, so maybe that's what happened. There were another 10 or so leeches tucked into the laces and flaps of my shoes that hadn't managed to work to any fleshy bits yet. I'm told there's some special way to remove leeches to minimize the damage they do and to minimize the chance for infection, but I'm guessing that whoever invented it didn't do so after walking through the rain for 3 hours and discovering they were covered in leeches. In any case, my method of removal probably wasn't medically ideal, but it got the job done. I was now on this little abandoned dirt road out in the middle of the bush still at least a 2 hour walk from town, completely soaked through with blood pouring down my arms and legs. The walk back was pretty miserable. The rain picked up again and I was getting pretty cold by now. Despite all that, I still found the situation pretty amusingly terrible and couldn't help smiling and laughing at it all. By the time I got back to the hostel the blood from my arms had spread down with the help of the rain soak part of my shirt, which was unfortunately white. The reaction upon walking into the common room was one of shocked horror. I gave a quick explanation of my day and assured them I was alright before getting my towl and some dry clothes and having a long, hot shower. When I finally exited from the shower in dry clothes (but still bleeding, those bites bled for like 5 hours before they stopped) I heard one of the other guests asking the woman that runs the hostel "So what can you do around here on a rainy day?". I just grinned manically and offered "I have a suggestion for what -not- to do!"

Day 313: Hike #2

On the second day I was ready to tackle something a bit more ambitious. In the morning I took a different path to the park and got to the trails near Katommba Falls. After poking around some of the side paths I took one of the staircases down into forest below the cliffs. The stairways are around 900 steps and there are signs everywhere warning that they are difficult, but they're broken up and really not too bad. I had originally planned to go the opposite direction of the previous day but I'd lost a couple hours checking out side trails at the top so I changed my mind and walked along the same way as the previous day, only this time in the rainforest near the bottom of the valley instead of on the cliff at the top.

The route back up went past a few different waterfalls, and of course back up the 900 steps of a different staircase. Once at the top I followed the road for awhile but soon found another trail to continue along the cliff, eventually getting to a point called Bridal Veil Lookout which gave another sweeping view down into the valley.

I came back out near Leura and stopped by the grocery store there to buy a few things at their bakery for dinner, then walked back to Katoomba along the road.