Steep Hills of Wellington

Thursday 3rd November
Ann cooked a fabulous breakfast for Janet and Peter, there was so much as well! They did the best they could but they couldn’t manage it all. I had fresh fruit, muesli and yoghurt, delicious and I was impressed that the cornflakes on offer were Kellogg’s, not a shop own brand which are nasty and soggy or taste odd. Kellogg’s are the best and it is a measure of the establishment in my mind if they have Kellogg’s or not. Ann got a big tick in this box, she is the only place so far who has had Kellogg’s. Ann also came up trumps with the washing. We asked for the whereabouts of the nearest laundrette and she insisted on doing it in her machine and pegging it out to dry. Very kind of her.

We were due to be picked up for a tour of The Lord of the Rings filming locations and the Weta Film Studios. However, despite confirming the tour last night by phone the guide failed to turn up. We rang again and they said they had contacted our agent several times and had we not had the messages, well, we knew that was not true because our agents have been in touch by email about an itinerary change at the glacier so I’m sure they would have passed on queries from the tour firm. I think that because the place we were staying does not have a website they couldn’t find it, and didn’t bother to ring us back to ask. It was rather annoying, but we put it to one side and concentrated on the tour, we weren’t going to let it spoil our day.

The tour took us to various locations in Wellington where The Lord of the Rings filming took place. The guide had still shots from the film and showed us where they were in real life, some had been shot using clever angles and he shared other tricks of the trade which made it more interesting. For instance, there was a thick spooky wood that was used for the scenes where the hobbits were fleeing from the The Black Riders, the Ringwraiths, he explained that where the scene of the Ringwraith sitting on the horse silhouetted against the night sky was filmed, the horse had steamy breath which was fine, but so did the actor, which was no good because they were supposed to be neither living nor dead, they were in-between according to the book so they couldn’t have breath. To get around that problem rather than spend $10,000+ on digitally altering the picture they purchased a $10 snorkel and got the actor to wear it with the tube going down his back, so there was no breath steam. The character had a fabric hood over his head so that concealed the snorkel, problem solved at a budget price. The excursion also included a tour of the Weta Film Studios. This was very interesting. It is a studio that does special effects for lots of films. We saw how they made silicone masks for monsters – a speciality of theirs. Their boast was that they could make plastic look like anything they wanted. Indeed they had what to the naked eye looked like metal swords or chainmail or armour but it was all plastic, very effective and convincing, they are masters at their art. Because of their skill they are sought after and have manufactured monsters, gore, and all manner of special effects for loads of films, many that I had never heard of but include Avatar and HellBoy as well as the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings.

We were dropped off by the cable car station to catch it to the top of the hill to the Botanical Gardens. Wellington is a very hilly city; the streets are incredibly steep in places. Some of the residential houses that were perched on hillsides actually had their own personal single person cable car to get them from the road to their house. These looked very Heath Robinson and apparently have no health and safety regulations covering them so I’m not sure I would like to trust one to get me to my house. We had a map of the Botanical Gardens; unfortunately, it bore no resemblance to the pathways and we couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Also, it failed to say that the gardens were, as usual, on a very steep slope so walking around involved lots of steep slopes and stairs. We quickly became very tired and puffed out. We were trying to head for the Rose Garden Café which had been recommended to us but it took us ages of trudging around in circles before we came across it. In fact, we cheated because we saw a sign for the steep slopes route to the café or the easy route – guess which we took! The easy route involved going out the gates, walking down the flat road and back in some other gates further along – much easier. The café was a welcome refuge after all the walking, we were starting to flag badly and our feet were throbbing. Still after a cuppa and something to eat we felt a bit better – ready to tackle the hills back to the cable car down to the city.

Wellington is also home to the excellent Te Papa Museum which tells the history of NZ and includes an earthquake simulator. New Zealand is a young country that has only been populated for around 800 years, there were life stories of immigrants, New Zealand’s stance on nuclear weapons and a very moving exhibition on Gallipoli which had gigantic models of people, of soldiers and nurses with realistic set ups of war time conditions and what happened. I found it extremely moving, as much as visiting the war graves in Ypres had been. I would recommend anyone with an interest in the wars to visit this. I knew that New Zealand is a landmass straddling two plates of the earth but there was a lot of information about how the earth is formed, how it developed, the plates of the earth and the history of volcanos and earthquakes. It was extremely interesting and of course so relevant to this country who experience an earthquake every day although most are very weak.

We were so exhausted by all our walking today that we just wanted an easy meal. However, this is not very likely when I’m around as I am such a fussy eater. I was even getting exasperated with myself! Finally, after rejecting lots of eateries we settled on a bistro who agreed to cook me an omelette. I do wish I could eat anything it would make life so much easier.Read more