A visit to Middle Earth, a.k.a. Wellington

We got into port very early that day. In fact, it was one of the few mornings where we saw the sun as it was still coming up over the horizon (Paul more than me—I was up later).

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We did the whole breakfast/theatre wait/onto the bus shuffle as before. Then it was off to visit Middle Earth.

What was really cool is that our tour guide had actually been in the Lord of the Rings trilogy AND in “The Hobbit.” He was a body/stunt double for one of the dwarves in the latter, and a Nazgul in the Trilogy. So, of course, he knew a lot of background and behind-the-scenes stuff about the movies. Perfect for this job, I would say. I was going to remember his name, but it’s been too long since the trip, and that info is buried under too many days away from it.

(Looks more like Hagrid from “Harry Potter” to me.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway—our first stop was the WETA Studios (https://www.wetaworkshop.com/). This was where all of the cool special effects and costumes and brainstorming for the backdrops all came from.

The lobby was fantastic…

…and the interior workshop was even more so. Unfortunately for the folks back home, tourists are not allowed to take pictures in there. Copyrights and all that sort of thing.

Again, it’s been too many weeks, and I don’t remember much of what was told us by our guide. I do remember one thing: the armor that the elephant-thing riders wore was fashioned with the plates facing upward—because they would have been fired on from below and therefore couldn’t have armor plating that allowed for gaps in the downward position.

So we were off again, after buying the requisite souvenir things. So many cool options—but in our case anything we bought had to be somewhat flat and easy to stow. Not a lot of room in our luggage as it was.

Our next stop was the pine forest atop Mt. Victoria, where a lot of the outside shots had been done. It looked an awful lot like Oregon—I could have been hiking at Silver Falls instead.

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We trotted down several paths, and got a lot of interesting movie info along the way.

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A couple of things stand out in my memory:

1. There is a scene in the first of the trilogy movies where the hobbits fall down a hill and fetch up against a tree. Sam says something like, “I think I broke something,” and produces a busted carrot from his pocket. In reality, the stunt hobbits had done the rolling, and Sam’s stunt double DID break something—a rib. He had to be transported to the hospital!
2. Sean Astin (Samwise Gamgee) did not know about the LOTR books when he was cast. All he knew was that it was an adventure movie. At that time, he was some 30 pounds overweight. In his mind, he knew that this type of movie would require him to be much thinner and in better shape. So when he reported for filming, he had been working out and had lost all that weight. Peter Jackson made him put it all back on again!
3. When you see all the hobbits running, you might notice that Sam is not there. It’s because all that weight he gained back made it impossible for him to keep running for all the takes that Jackson filmed for every scene.

There was so much more. I wish I could have written it all down right then and there.

Our last stop was at the top of Mt. Victoria, in order to get a good look at the entire Wellington area and environs. Gorgeous views!

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The second part of our day was spent wandering around Wellington on our own. We took lots of pictures, sampled beer in a couple of places, and generally enjoyed ourselves until evening, when we had to get back on board the ship again.

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Wellington’s Capitol Building–we’re told it’s the ugliest building in the country. Do you agree?

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It’s becoming more and more apparent—cruises are meant merely to give people a tantalizing taste of different ports of call, so that they will come back and stay for longer periods of time.

My next entry will be the lovely port town of Picton. I don’t know when that will be, but it will happen at some point.

Hope you’re enjoying this travel blog!