Saturday, January 15, 2011

Further adventures in photo-taking

Wednesday morning saw us packing up in a scramble to check out and make it by the skin of our teeth to join a half-day Lord of the Rings tour. Our tour guide was full of fabulous stories to tell because the lucky bugger had worked pretty much full-time as an extra and doing other odd jobs on all 3 movies. He's been a Gondorian soldier, a spectral warrior, one of the Haradrim...you get the idea. We visited a lookout or two, the Buckland forest filming site, the Weta Cave and the outside of the filming studios.

The most enthusiastic tour guide ever!

Most enthusiastic tour guide ever

Wellington, looking towards the Miramar Peninsula

Wellington, looking towards the Miramar Peninsula

Spot the matching trees.

Spot the matching trees

Spot the matching trees

Lurtz at Weta Cave

Lurtz

Lurtz warning sign

After the tour we popped into Te Papa very briefly and had a look at some of the Maori exhibits before piling back into the car and heading off to Wellington Zoo where we had lunch, saw a Kiwi's bum (it was fast asleep and half hidden) and I took photos of otters.

Tuatara

Tuatara at Wellington Zoo

Asian small clawed otter

Asian small clawed otter at Wellington Zoo

Then we drove to Hastings for an overnight stay, there was lots of Scenery on the way so I made Adam get out of the car and photograph some of it.

IMG_0609

We were supposed to go to Napier the next morning to look at the Art Deco stuff and had also half planned to find a winery or 3 but somehow ended up letting the kids talk us into visiting a Laser Tag place instead. But first we did a tour of a tannery and sheepskin products factory. Then I read Kindred by Octavia Butler and Adam watched the scoreboard while the kids shot at complete strangers in the dark for a while. Afterwards we had lunch at a park, did a token drive-by of the Art Deco architecture in Napier and indulged ourselves with a visit to one winery before hitting the road to Rotarua.

View from the Esk Valley winery cellar door

View from Esk Valley winery

We stopped for ice cream on the shore of Lake Taupo.

Lake Taupo

And then drove into Rotarua to a chorus of gagging and howls of protest from the back seat over the smell. We have since decided that our hotel is situated in one of the stinkiest parts of Rotarua, and yes, there are definite differences in stench levels around the town!

4 comments:

suze2000 said...

Hop into the hot pools - they make the smell all worth it.

Though yes, it is better to be further away from the Lake, I believe. Darren would have the scoop on that - he goes there a bit for work.

Leslie said...

wow.. what amazing photos. Looks like a great trip. My huband and oldest daughter would love it.
Have a fantastic sunday.

Joanie said...

Love all the amazing photos!

Sleepydumpling said...

Beautiful, beautiful. I'd love to do a LOTR tour of New Zealand!