Wellington, the capital of New Zealand! David has a haircut planned, after which he will walk around Wellington enjoying the sights and whatever tickles his fancy. I plan a tour billed as Lord of the Rings – On Location, which will take us to all of the sites around Wellington where they filmed the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

There are only 25 of us on the tour; Bob, our leader from the ship (the ship sends one of their own personnel with each tour in case of problems), said he was worried that it would be canceled . I didn't worry because it didn’t occur to me that it wouldn’t be oversubscribed, but I guess there are fewer enthusiasts than I thought. However, all that really means for now is that there is plenty of room on the bus and we can spread out.

Our first stop is at the very top of Mt. Victoria, which has lovely panoramic views of Wellington, including the harbor where the Amsterdam is docked. We take scenic photos and look at all the sights laid out before us. Todd, our bus driver, reveals that he is also an actor and was cast in the Lord of the Rings. He played at least two parts, actually: one as a leader of the Haradrim, who drove the oliphaunt that Legolas climbed up to cut away its trappings and throw all the riders to the ground before killing the oliphaunt with his arrows; and another as one of the courtiers in Denethor’s court at Minas Tirith. In the second part, Todd said he is one of the documented time discrepancies in the film; at one point he and two others are shown behind Faramir when Denethor tells Faramir he wishes Faramir had died instead of Boromir . He signals to the other two courtiers to leave, but in the next scene, they are back again, right behind Faramir. (If that paragraph was confusing or boring, you would not have enjoyed this tour anything like as much as I did – fair warning.)

On the way down from the peak, we stopped at the place on Mt. Victoria where they filmed the flight of the hobbits from the Nazgul to the Hobbiton ferry. Todd explained that it was filmed during the day and they used blue filters on the cameras to make it look like night. We looked down the path and could see houses through the trees at the bottom of the hill. Todd said they used a super-powerful spotlight to simulate the moon; the people in the houses nearby did not know a movie was being filmed and overwhelmed the police station with calls reporting UFOs.

After Mt. Victoria, we went to the Weta Cave on the Miramar Peninsula, which is also known as Wellywood because the New Zealand film industry is centered there . Listening to Todd, one could soon come to believe that Peter Jackson is buying all of the Miramar Peninsula and its industry with his proceeds from Lord of the Rings (LOTR). They will be starting the filming of The Hobbit in March, and the bus driver is hoping to be cast in it. At the Weta Cave they have lots of memorabilia and some life-size statues of some of the characters: Gollum and Warg (chief of the Orcs) are the two most prominent. I bought a guide book to all the sites in New Zealand and Todd autographed it next to the picture of a dead mumak or oliphaunt, as Sam called them. We viewed a DVD that showed the founding of Weta and the special effects, and how the films are made.

We then went to a beautiful restaurant on the water where they gave us some elevenses. Once we had fortified ourselves with tea and muffins, we boarded the bus and drove to Kaitoke Regional Park, where Rivendell was filmed. One the way, Todd pointed out the area of the Hutt River that became the River Anduin in the film . One of the things we found at the park was the site where Elrond’s house was built, and where Frodo awoke after he was brought to Rivendell by Arwen. We also saw the tree where the iconic picture of Orlando Bloom as Legolas was taken; they have had to build a platform for pictures because so many people wanted to have their picture taken there that the tree was being killed. We also saw the site where Peter Jackson had the waterfall in Rivendell built – he didn’t feel he could use a natural waterfall because you can’t control the flow of water and it could be strong one day and less another. One of the conditions for most of the sites used for filming was that everything be put back the way it was when the filming ended and they did that with a vengeance at Kaitoke.

Our last stop was at Harcourt Park, which has the area where they placed two hinged black beech trees and felled them over and over and over again, filming from different angles to produce the effect of hundreds of trees being felled in Isengard. There was also the place where they filmed Saruman and Gandalf walking together, and the path where Gandalf rode into Hobbiton. You can still see where the path was because when the landscapers put it back, they used a different kind of grass seed than in the rest of the meadow.

On the way home we passed by the quarry where Helm’s Deep was built and filmed, but did not stop. All in all, it was a great tour and a great day!