[Joe]

Notes:

1. Our tour guide was an idiot. He kept saying that Tolkien got shell-shocked in WWII.

2. Our guide also said he didn’t like the movies because he recognized too much of it. He’s reading the books currently, though he said he wasn’t much of a reader. I mentioned there’s a good audiobook version, and he asked if it was word for word. So I guess he’s not a complete idiot.

3. There was a guy on our tour using a GPS watch to geotag his photos. He was also from Washington (the state) and was allergic to apples.

4. The same guy tried to buy a copy of The One Ring, but it wasn’t the right size. I thought it was suppose to change sizes. I guess he wasn’t meant to have the ring.

5. The locals seem to have no love for Liv Tyler. The guide said that she wasn’t very good at speaking elvish and the stuff that she said on the DVD extras about loving it was all lies.

6. Our tour guide also told us that he bred his own lamb for Christmas dinner. He said it was inbred, but it didn’t have any deformations so that was good enough for him.

[Joe]

Notes:

1. As you can almost see in one of the pictures, our tour guide had a laptop and was showing us clips from the movies. It was very cool, because he was able to show us trees and such that we could immediately match up with the video. I’m guessing it wasn’t entirely legal, because the folks in Matamata were very careful not to use things from the movies except with explicit permission. I suppose they have to stay on better relations with the rights holders, if they want to keep the facades and stuff. This tour in Wellington was a one man show, he was even taking bookings on his cellphone while we were on the tour.

2. I’m afraid Mr. Gnome didn’t make it out of bed until this day. I think what I’ll do is get a bunch of his pics and post them all together.

3. Wellington is where we took the ferry to the South Island which explains the title. Don’t worry, I get more incoherent later on.

4. Wellington was a bit noisy for new years. We weren’t around for the worst of it because the only Mass we found was at midnight.

[Joe]

Note: Mt. Unpronounceable is Mt. Ngauruhoe.

[Joe]

Notes:
1. We weren’t suppose to take pictures of the glowworms, but apparently that didn’t stop other people.

2. Before the tour I asked one of the guys that worked at the farm if he knew whether or not The Hobbit was going to be filmed on the same location and he said that he didn’t know and if the boss knew he wouldn’t say. Then on the tour, the guide said that it was definitely going to be filmed there. I’m not sure who to believe.

3. In one of the pictures you can see the pond that the party field looks out onto. On the far right side of that is where the bridge and mill were. According to the guide, the owner of the farm drove out on to set one day to see what was going on and came to the bridge. One of the film workers gave him the hand signal to stop because the bridge was made out of flimsy materials. The owner thought it was the hand signal to come across so he drove over it and was fine. Supposedly this was the inspiration to have Gandalf to ride over the bridge.

4. The farm has fences all over the place to keep the sheep in their proper pastures. Apparently, the set builders didn’t realize that sheep could walk over the bridge, because one day they came out and all the sheep were mixed up.

5. In Rotorua I had lamb shanks for dinner. It had some vile flavor to it, which made me understand Dad’s refusal to eat the stuff.

[Joe]