Here's the train we took down from Auckland
to Wellington. The ride took about 11 hours and there is one train
down each day and one down each night.
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Eleven hours of countryside like this.
And perhaps 6 hours of commentary by the perky attendants who told
us lots of proud details about the laying of the track, the elevation
of each station (up to a whopping 900 meters above sea level), and the
date each section of track was completed.
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We found the city of Wellington to be our
favorite spot in New Zealand so far. The coast is gorgeous, the
food has been the best on our trip so far, and there are video cameras
set up in malls so you can talk to people in malls in other cities in
New Zealand. Oh, and the headlines are pretty funny.
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We decide to rent a car and see what we can
of Wellington and the many filming locations for LOTR around here.
Well, first we asked the tourist bureau if there is a LOTR tour,
but there isn't. Our first site, Bree, was a bust. The old
fort that was Bree was flattened and a school was being built on the
site. We moved on to Mt Victoria, where Julie is filming.
This is the location for the first encounter between Frodo and the
ring wraiths. "Get off the road!"
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Can you imagine all those lucky mountain
bikers in Wellington who have Mt Victoria available to ride on every
day? There were some really fun looking trails on the mountain and
here's proof that lots of bikes use them.
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Julie stands by the "great Anduin" river
where Arwen said "If you want him, come and claim him!"
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There wasn't so much that we could recognize
at the filming location of Isengard. But we saw the frisbee golf
course in Harcourt's Park. I wonder if they had to airbrush out
the targets...
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At Kaitoke, the location for Rivendale, we
met a nice ranger who described the set a little for us. He said
he had to watch over the film crew to make sure they didn't saw off
branches or otherwise molest the woods (which they were indeed doing
during the three months it took to build the set). Finding this
spot was really magical.
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The set for Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith was
Dry Creek Quarry. That pretty much makes it a clean sweep for us
in Wellington. Tomorrow, we'll try to find Weta FX studios based
on information from our car rental agent, who rented lots of cars to the
LOTR crew.
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The next morning before our ferry to the
south island, we stop in at the special effects studio (Weta FX Studios)
that did the animation for LOTR. Here, I'm acting out a scene
from the DVD where Peter Jackson shows how Gollum was animated.
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