There and Back Again

The last weekend of May in the States is usually spent together with friends and family around a BBQ or out on a mini vacation for the long Memorial Day weekend.  Here in New Zealand however, we were busy working that weekend.  It was the following weekend however, that we got our chance to escape for a long weekend to celebrate the Queen's birthday.  Woooo Queen!  So we capitalized on the opportunity and headed out to check out the Lord of the Rings filming location for Hobbiton.

The site is on a big ranch on the outskirts of a small New Zealand town called Matamata and it's no surprise why they chose that site to build the town of Hobbiton.  It is tucked away in the beautiful rolling green hills of the ranch and it is a fairy tale landscape if I've ever seen one.  We began the tour by walking through the little gap where Froto met Gandolf as he rode into Hobbiton.  As we walked through the set with our guide, she explained all the painstaking effort Peter Jackson and the crew went through to make sure every detail was right, and some of the movie magic that went into filming.  There were apple trees that were completely de-leafed and re-leafed with plum tree leaves and fruit.  There were all kinds of hobbit holes of every scale, all of which were little more than 2D fronts and opened up into a few feet of space before dirt.  All the indoor areas, including that of Bag End, were all filmed in Wellington.  I'm sure we will tour the studio when the time comes.  As the tour came to a close we walked passed the party tree and across a bridge into a totally recreated Green Dragon Pub where we had a cider and sat next to the fire while listening to the celtic music playing.  It was a great day.  The night however, was a different story.

Cider in the Green Dragon Pub

That night we had to drive about an hour and a half to our campsite, an hour of which was off the highway on unsealed roads.  It was a bad time to realize that Velma's headlights were in terrible need of replacement.  Picture being in the woods in the middle of the night with nothing but a cell phone to light your way.  Needless to say, a good chunk of that hour was spent slogging through the darkness at a snails pace and yet still managing to miss every turn as it came up.  When we did finally arrive at our lakeside campsite we were exhausted and starving and I was more than a little grumpy.  It was freezing and pitch black, and not a good time to for us to learn that we couldn't efficiently cook pasta with a gas cooker.  Eventually, we did get dinner sorted out (thank you Kayleigh!) and when we did get a chance to relax, I realized what a wonder the night sky was.  I've never seen so many stars, and the milky way stood out so clearly across it.  It was as if we were in a cave, looking up at a million tiny glowworms…oh wait, that was to be the next day, and you'll have to wait until tomorrow to hear about that.  Good night!