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Published: December 6th 2007
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Hello again. I don't have many pics this time, because we haven't had as much hiking or tours to do in the past few days. But lets see, the last I wrote to you was in Abel Tasman, then we drove to Nelson which is a couple hours east. Nelson is a nice sized town of 44,000 people roughly, with a great artistic scene going for it. We arrived on the weekend so we were able to check out the weekly arts and crafts fair. It consisted of the usual jade and bone carvings that we have seen, but it also boasted some unique things, such as small airplanes made out of your favorite beer, and some guy playing the didguri do (I have no idea how to spell that obviously).
We witnessed some glass being blown as well. The artist made an abalone shell out of glass in about 15 min and in the store another one was selling for a few hundred dollars. That's an amazing profit, as long as people want abalone made out of glass.
We didn't have much else to do in Nelson besides walk to a few gardens, so we watched Beowulf!
The cinematography was fantastic and the computer imaging of the characters is easy to get used to. It doesn't scare children as I heard it did when the Polar Express came out with Tom Hanks.
After a relaxingly lazy time in Nelson we continued to Picton on the 2nd where we would catch our ferry back to the north island on the 3rd. We had all day to drive the 2 hours so we decided to stop in at some of the 25 wineries in a few mile radius. It was awesome! I need to taste wine more often! We probably had about 5 glasses of free wine in around 2 hours.
For any of you winos out there, the region is called the Marlborough and the Sauvignon Blancs are the pride of the area. We tasted mainly 2005 and 2007 Blancs, and bought a 2005 Nautilus Sauvignon. I can't say that I have had more than a few glasses of white wine in my life, and so have nothing to compare this to, but they were so full of flavor with not much of a dry or alcoholic aftertaste. As you can see I lack the language
to describe wine, which has inspired me to learn more about it when I come home.
Also I really enjoyed the Hui Pinot Noir 2005. The wine is about $50 a bottle though so I don't think many of you will be rushing out to buy it, but I might have to say that it is one of the best red wines I have ever had. The flavor was incredibly full, especially the plum. Apparently 2005 was a very good year for the region because there was an early frost, so there was a lower yield than normal, allowing for a fuller flavor of the wine.
The day after we took the ferry back to Wellington and were lucky enough to have a free night to stay again with Bridget. We then continued north on the 4th to the Tongariro area, but not before we saw Rivendell. I didn't really recognize much in relation to the film, but it was still an interesting area to hike in with views of immense trees and vines along the way.
The following day we did one of the most difficult hikes we have done. If we had done this hike
earlier in our journey we would have been much more sore, but thanks to many hours of hiking almost everyday our legs were able to handle 60 degree climbs at times over loose gravel and traveling vertically up to 6000 ft. The trail we traversed is known as Tongariro crossing and is considered by our lonely planet guide to be one of the best day hikes in all of New Zealand.
The hike itself, as you can see from some of the pictures, had sparse plant life due to the area being volcanic. The last volcano to erupt in the area was 1975, so it was not all that long ago that lava flowed through the valley. For all of the LOTR nerds out there, we stood in awe of Mt. Doom, or for all of those that adhere to "reality", Mt. Ngauruhoe.
The hike was enjoyable for the most part, except for the incredibly steep climbing up gravel laden mountains, but the most fun was coming down those same mountains as if I was skiing down the slope.
The following day we continued north a few more hours to Waitomo where we took another tour of
a glow worm cave. This one was much more glamorous though. It was as if we weren't even in a cave, but a fancy museum, with spotlights everywhere, a concrete path, and a few groups of 30 people going through the cave at once. In terms of a personal experience, it lacked that quality, but the cave made up for it with literally thousands of glow worms above our heads as we took a short boat ride through the last part of the area. Again I was in awe of the small greenish points of light, so much so that I realized my mouth was open at one point, and immediately shut it, just in case any glow worm excrement happened to fall toward my gaping hole.
After the cave we went to a bird preserve where we finally saw a kiwi! I couldn't get a picture because it was dark, but they are very strange, plump, flightless, furry birds, that should have become extinct many millions of years ago. We also got to see one of the oldest known lizards that did not become extinct as the dinosaurs did. The lizard known as the Tautura has been around
for about 225 million years, and is known as a "living fossil" because of the incredible length of time they have survived. They are known in some mythologies or esoteric circles for their third eye that seems to have no use currently.
Today we drove north to Matamata where we visited a small town on the outskirts known as Hobbiton. Hobbiton is a quint down to earth place. From what I have seen in films the people are very generous with their beer and food, so I was excited to visit. However, on arriving via tour bus we found that New Line cinema had decided to have most of it destroyed, leaving a few houses intact. And unfortunately there were no hobbits to be found.
It was interesting learning about the immense amount of time and effort put in to the making of the films. One example is the oak tree that you can see above Bilbo's house in the first film. Apparently Peter Jackson is such a perfectionist that he found an oak tree he liked in a different area, had it chopped to pieces, and numbered, so that the whole thing could be reasembled above the
hobbit hole. As well as having 250,000 fake oak leaves sent from Taiwan to be individually attached. Now that is dedication to the Tolkian vision I would have to say.
Alrighty, got to go. Thanks for reading.
Daniel
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Lisa
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Hello Daniel!!
wow I love your pics! Especialy the animals ^_^~* That is awesome you got to go up to Mt. Doom!! And lots of wine mmmm....mmmm...mmmm......I encourage wine education and consumption!!!! :P''' ttyl, Muah** lisa