Wellywood

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Hi All,

We're now in Wellington, th ecapital of NZ, home of lord of the rings and other films creators weta. We've had 3 nights here in a hostel which is easy to spot as the outside is painted like a zebra. The first full day we decided to do a lord of the rings tour. Unfortunately pretty much all of the sets have been dismantled so you have to use your imagination. Our guide Ted made up for this with a lot of enthusiasm (his brother works at weta) and armed with a laptop to show us how the locations fit into scenes in the films. We did a few cheesey photos with some props that Ted made including some green poo... Nice. After the provided lunch (which I was happy with as it was subway sandwiches) we carried on the tour, saw the king kong ship and stopped at weta studio (though you're not allowed inside). For those reall interested the places we saw were:


* Gates of Moria, Dead Marshes, Osgilliath, Flooded Isengard, Courts of the king - All done in a wet set which was basically now a car park
* Gardens of Isengard, Hingerd trees of Isengard - Harcourt Park
* Aragorn washed ashore (after falling of the cliff), Departure of Boromir - Hutt River
* Rivendell - Kaitoke Regional Park
* Helms Deep, Minas Tirith - Dry Creek Quarry (we could see a tiny bit of wall that was left)
* First day filming, hobbiton woods, outer shire, weathertop, Dunharrow Plateu - Mt Vitoria


Our 2nd day we managed to go on the cable cars, look in the cable car museum, wonder round the bottanical gardens and visit Te Papa national museum all before 6pm and for about 2GBP! Luckily the hostel has free internet so we've been organising parts of the South Island visit as we're not using the stray bus to get everywhere. Next blog will be "darn sarth".

Bye for now

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Photos

In Hobbiton Woods
No Mr Frodo, no.

That was close
I nearly landed in the green poo!

Weta Studio
I really wanted to go in here but apparently it's secret (but is it safe?)

Deb and Cable Car
Nice view of the city.

Human Sundial
What time is it? It's Mike time.

Debbie in Rose Garden
At the bottanical gardens.