Sunshine, Weta and friends in Wellington

Woke to a bit of rain this morning but not where near like the the downpours have gotten used to!
We had a tour of the Weta Cave workshop booked and so were up and ready for 9.

We arrived for Weta a little early and had a look around the shop and mini museum there. Weta Caves for those who don't know (I had no idea until Rob told me) is where they do all the modelling and costume making for films like lord of the rings, district 9, King Kong and several others! Obviously we were most interested in the lord of the rings and the models they had on display in the entrance (the only place we are allowed to take pictures) were awesome! So much detail it is incredible and actually quite scary to get up close to!

The tour itself took about an hour and we were given props to hold, for example the gun from district 9, which was super heavy and a dwarves mace from the hobbit. We were also told lots of stories about the movies and things we might not know. For example over 3000 arrows were made for Lord of the Rings and they only got 200 back... you may find us now hunting for them in the forests! It is also incredible to see how much time and money is spent on some things, for them never to be used! An animatronic head and a massive model of a districts 9 alien both just sat there unused. Oh and not forgetting the halo car that is fully functional, can drive sideways at 80mph (whaaat!???) and just looks awesome... again not used due to the film now no being made. It did get an outing as a wedding car though! They just had to remove the gun.

It was interesting and slightly horrifying too to learn how they do the face casts, everything is moulded rather than put on as makeup (including for hands and feet) and for the faces they have so have their entire face covered in an awful mould that they must sit encased it from head to mid chest for an hour!! Then they have to peel it off and it is so tight it pulls out hairs. Sounded awful! And poor Elijah Wood have to have his done every 6 months as he was so young his face kept on changing. We also learnt that has the two film
Companies for lord of the rings and the hobbit are different, they cannot use inspiration from lord of the rings, despite the fact that they had already done all the concept work for it and clearly the two films have huge crossovers. Can't have been easy to manage that.

After the tour and another look around we headed to Wellington to meet Robs friend Dave who he used to work with. Him and his fiance, Rachel, took us out for lunch right by the Bay which was lovely and we had some delicious food to the sound of the waves. Really lovely couple and considering I hadn't met either of them before we got on really well very quickly.
After lunch they drove us to a fantastic look out over the city. Super windy up there though, hence the lonely wind turbine that Rachel told us her nephew thought was amazing enough to be classed as a world famous monument in his school project 😄

We headed into town once we decided it was far too cold to stay up on the lookout, despite the sunshine, and instead we went to a bar that was run by one of their friends called the Olive Garden. Really nice place but unfortunately we couldn't take advantage of their sun terrace due to a 1 year olds birthday party. Strange place to be having one of those but never mind!
Had some lovely craft beers and I had a cider which with a bit of lime was delicious!
At the second bar we were informed that we had all been invited to James and Justines house (who own the bar) for BBQ lamb, which we definitely could not resist!

We headed over there later in the day and met Justine and their their three children. Lovely family and we all got on very well which was nice. Dinner was fantastic, beautiful lamb with delicious salads and strawberries and cream for dessert! Yum! Was having a lovely evening and as it got a bit later Justine and James offered up their driveway for us to camp the night, which was very kind of them considering we had knelt just met, and it also meant I could enjoy a glass of wine.

Eventually after a lot more chatting it was about time to head to bed, especially for those with work in the morning and we needed to be on the 9am ferry to the South Island, where we planned on heading to Kaikoura.

And that was when the Earthquake struck..... which I will describe in a seperate post!Read more