NZ Day 7: Wellington to New Plymouth

For what was mainly a travel day, we did lots of fun things too!

The room was very comfortable, but the sounds of the city caused some restlessness. We had a quick breakfast in the room before heading for our tour of the Weta Workshop. We learned how the company was started by a couple who met at high school over a shared passion for making artistic creations and they started making props for TV commercials in their garage. Their business grew over many years, but really took off when their friend Peter Jackson, with whom they had worked with on his previous films, asked them to do the props and prosthetics for Lord of the Rings, increasing the company from 35 to over 100 employees. We saw how they made many of the artifacts from 3-d printed chain mail to silicon masks. They put a tremendous effort into each prop, often needing to make many identical ones with moulds as they get damaged. They have the world’s best swordsmiths on staff. They also need to make multiple copies at different scales. For example, Bilbo’s/Frodo’s sword “Sting” needed one size for when a “human” like Gandalf held it, and another bigger size for when a “hobbit” held it, to emphasize the character size differences. It was a really fun tour but we couldn’t take photos for most of it. However, there were some fun trolls outside.

Next, we drove up Mt Victoria to a couple of the filming sites of LOTR, when the Hobbits were leaving the shire.

We found a quick Geocache so we had a find in NZ.

We fought the crowds at the top of Mt Victoria which had great views all around. A couple of cruise ships were docked which explained the crowds.

On the way out of town, we stopped at a Starbucks to buy Queenstown and Wellington mugs for our collection. It was inside a shopping mall, which was much like a US one, and we grabbed lunch.

Then it was a 5 hour drive. At one point it seemed like it would only be 4 hours, but a car wreck added about an hour. We were very glad to see Mt Tapanaki pushing through the clouds, and went on a short detour to see Dawson Falls in the National Park. The volcano had its own weather system, with thick cloud closer in.

Near our hotel in New Plymouth, we grabbed a quick dinner at a casual family restaurant, which had a robot server! On our walk back to the hotel, the volcano silhouetted beautifully against the night sky.

We are all hoping for good weather tomorrow and we are taking a 12-mile hike with a shuttle, and don’t fancy getting as wet as we did for the Hooker Valley trail.

This page is part of our New Zealand trip set of posts