The week the Hobbits came to town

My love for all things Lord of the Rings (well...the movies, anyway) is what first brought me to NZ way back in 2004, so it's fair to say that those movies changed my life. 

So you can imagine how chuffed I was to find myself, by pure cooincidence, staying in the same village where filming for The Hobbit was going on.

For the past five days I've been a giddy little girl, unashamedly asking people to take my photo with them and chatting up whomever I can, so long as they're somehow linked to the movie.

At first, I only encoutered crew members (drivers, caterers, etc.), all of whom received these hoodies a few days prior:

That dude in the background owns this hoodie.  He goodnaturedly offered to let me wear it for a photo. 

I'm such a geek.

 A few days later, I came across some of the lesser-known actors such as Richard Armitage, Graham McTavish, and Stephen Hunter.

But, finally, on Monday this happened:



Martin Freeman! He plays Bilbo.  You might also know him from The Office, Hitchhiker`s Guide to the Galaxy and Love Actually.
(Stupid blogging site!  Why have you made vertical pictures unusable?)



And the main event:



Yup.  That's me with Sir Ian Freaking McKellan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Gandalf/Magneto himself.
He was lovely.  Friendly, funny, gracious and all round awesome.  Defnitely not the diva he has every right to be.

How amazing is that????? I was shaking when I first talked to him, but he was obviously used to it and took it all in stride.  I'm sure I came off as a ditzy chick. Oh well. 

Sadly, they've wrapped up their filming here, and they've left me bereft. 

Snowboarding and other random pictures

I am happy to report that after being employed at a ski field for the better part of three months, dating a ski instructor for the same amount of time, and taking two lessons, I have reached one of my goals for the year.  I can finally say I'm comfortable skiing down some of the blue runs at Treble Cone (which would be considered black runs anywhere else. That mountain be STEEP).


Woohoo!


And, as of Tuesday, I acheived another goal -- I tried snowboarding.


Dave very kindly took time out of his work day up at the Cardrona ski resort where he works to show me how to board.  We went there cause it's a much easier mountain on which to learn anything thanks to its mercifully flat beginners' area and actual green runs (as mentioned above blue runs at Treble Cone = black elsewhere.  Same goes for the green run.  Green at TC = blue anywhere else).


It was a lot of fun, despite the multiple painful and embarassing spills and the inevitable mocking from my oh-so-helpful instructor (anyone who's ever tried to learn a new skill or teach a new skill to a romantic partner knows what I'm talking about). By late afternoon I managed to make it down the oh-so-flat slope once or twice without falling!  Go me!  Dave had to (begrudgingly) admit that I "turned out to be pretty average" after all.  Yay!  Mediocrity!


Though I am devastatingly without a camera at the moment, luckily Dave has one and has been very generous about my borowing it.  So, I have pictures!


Heading up the "magic carpet" (basically like an escalator in the snow).

After one of my many spills.



Still smiling though.  I'm a trouper.

We have motion! Look up Nadine.  Look up! 


I'm planning on taking another lesson on Monday or Tuesday up at Treble Cone, so hopefully I'll be able to actually make it down a run or two by then. 


In the meantime, I'm nursing sore muscles, limping, and groaning like an old lady.


Let's see, what else has been going on lately?


Dave and I went down to Invercargill again last week to watch a Rugby World Cup game between Scotland and Georgia.  It was fun, though expensive and the game itself was rather a snoozefest since not a single try (goal) was scored.  All the points were made thanks to penalty kicks.  Yawn.


Here are some photos.




Some sheep bedecked in the flags of the four nations that played games down in Invercargill.

A dude in a jaunty Scotish cap watches as the national anthems are sung before the match.

Heineken is sponsoring the RWC, so they're the only beer you can buy on the spot.  They come in these awful four packs, with environmentally unfriendly rings from which the beer is hard to extract (especially since they open the cans before selling them to you).  We ended up spending $72 on beer between the two of us.  That's for 12 beers.  Damn it.  As a result, I don't remember much of the second half of the match.

Unflattering shot of moi during the match.  Notice the be-mulleted man to my left (your right)?  He made a point of giving the finger to the TV camera every time it was pointed in his general direction.  Classy.  Also, it was raining, thus the hood.

Have I mentioned that Dave is also a volunteer fireman?  Pretty sweet eh?  Well two Saturdays ago there was an event to hand out plaques and stripes and pins and medals and such to various members of the Wanaka, Luggate and Hawea (three regions near here) fire brigade to recognize their years of service, and I got to go as Dave's date.


Not going to lie, the night was interminibly long what with the pomp and circumstance and the speaches and the awkward conversations.  It was like being at a high school graduation and a wedding where you know nobody all rolled into one.  On the plus side, I got to dress up and go somewhere with a man in uniform (awwwwww yeah!) and there was an open bar.  And you know I availed myself of that.




Me in a dress for the first time in months, and Dave in his fancy fireman suit for the first time ever.




Dave and some fellow brigaderes (not sure if that's a word, but I like it anyway) line up for some official welcome thing.  He's the fourth from the left.

 And I've had a few fun nights out with people from work.  Often I don't have a camera with me, but this particular night I did.


Me and the blondies: Jade, Jenny and Amber at Amber's house.



Amber and I looking as happy as we were (notice the glass).

 And Dave and I went to the old mining town of Arrowtown one day last week too.  He used to work at one of the resorts there and brought me on a little tour. It was quaint.



Me near the waterfall beside the Millbrook Resort.



Very likely the highlight of the week -- This is around where they filmed the Ford of Bruinen scenes in Fellowship of the Ring.  You know, the scene with the horses and the river.  I annoyed Dave with quotes from the movie for a good ten minutes after this ("Give us the halfling She Elf!"  "If you want him, come and claim him!").  Ahhhhh. Now that I look at it though, I think I should have gone another few hundred metres upriver.  Oh well.  Close enough.

And of course, in my jobless state, I've been spending a lot of time with a furry and barky creature.  He's taken to following me around wherever I go during the day on the off-chance that I might bring him for a walk (I do take him out once or twice a day).  Poor Scruff.




Scruffle Ruffle!  Happy to be out on a walk.



Speaking of Scruff, I really should bring him out.  He's been ever so patient all morning. Toodleloo!

Glowing worms, moa bones, and big mountains, oh my!

Sorry for the two posts today.  I don't always have access to Internet, so when I do, I have to pounce.

This morning we were out the door and on the road by 8:30.  Destination: Waitomo two hours southwest via a rather indirect route (many, if not most routes in NZ are of the indirect nature, thanks to the hilly landscape).

Waitomo is a small town.  It’s fitting, given that what draws people here is a very small thing.  Waitomo is blessed with a large network of caves, which in itself is rather interesting.  But it’s what you find on the roof of many of these caves which has tourists flocking there like moths to the flame – or like flies to the glow worm.

Glow worms are actually glow maggots (ew) that are hatched on the roof of wet, dark caves and cliffs.  They drape long sticky strands that trap unwitting insects that are drawn to the little greenish light the worms emit from their butts. 

It all sounds rather gross, but when you’re standing in a cave looking up at a ceiling covered in thousands of these critters, it’s something else.  It literally looks like someone took a long piece of thick black cardboard, punctured it with pinpricks, then backlit it with a dull green light.

Glowworms? or night's sky?  You decide (pssst...it's the former)

We had the lucky surprise of being the only people in our tour group, so we had our own private guide who drove us through hilly farmland to a cave and guided our raft through the very still water and explained the critters to us.

The entire tour group.

The tour also included some short walks through the idyllic countryside and a tour of dryer cave where we saw tons of stalagtites, stalagmites, rock pearls, flow rock, and tons of other very slow growing formations. 

Overhead you have stalagtites (cause they have to hang on tight).  Below, stalagmites (cause they might reach the top of the cave)

There were also the bones of various animals that had tragically fallen to their deaths through holes some 20-25m above, including a goat, a cow, and even a 200,000 year-old moa skeleton. Crazy.

Oh, and we saw a cave weta.

I think the most exciting thing I heard today was that recently Peter Jackson, the director of Lord of the Rings visited the caves in Waitomo.  Speculation is that he might have been scouting out the location for the cave scenes for The Hobbit. (Squee!) Now all we need is for this actors' dispute to be resolved so we can finally get this movie made.

It really would be aweful for this country if The Hobbit doesn't get filmed here.  It's tourism industry has blossomed since LOTR came out, and if it were to be filmed elsewhere, it could mean a huge loss for decades to come. 

We’re now in the small village of National Park which is in Tongariro National Park (they were really creative when naming the village, no?).  Basically we’re at the foot of four huge, active volcanoes, the highest which is nearly 2800m tall (Ruapehu), and another which had a starring role in Lord of the Rings as Mount Doom (Ngauruhoe). 

Beyold! Ruapehu!

It’s a popular spot for hiking (or tramping, as they call it here) and for skiing, which I was surprised to find out is still going on this late in the year.

Tomorrow the plan is to do a few shorter walks, then head in the general direction of Wellington.

Back to Auckland and beyond to the Coromandel, Matamata and to a certain movie set

As you no doubt deducted from the title, I’m back in New Zealand (with a fabulous tan).  Over the past two days I’ve picked up a few things – a functioning bank card for my kiwi bank account, a cell phone, a sore back (due to rather cramped living quarters in Auckland – it was so overbooked that the owner had me sleeping on a mattress on the floor of a tiny two-bed room) and two travel companions. 

I used to babysit Chrissy way back in the day, and now she and her husband Nick are in New Zealand for a few weeks, and I’m tagging along for the ride.  It’s nice to have some company (and such good company at that).

We met up this morning and quickly zipped out of the city in their rental car with no real plan in mind.  Quickly determining that I had never been to the Coromandel, and had always wanted to go, we chose our destination as we were driving north.

On the way, we stopped off in the small town of Matamata whose main claim to fame is being the closest town to where they filmed the Hobbiton scenes in Lord of the Rings. 

What is up with my leg position?

I wasn’t sure I was up to paying the $66 fee to take the tour of the set for a second time (I’d been in 2004), but I’m so glad I did.  I can’t say much, due to a confidentiality agreement I signed, but let’s just say the place looks rather different than it did six years ago.  I’ll let you figure out the rest. ;)

In any case, I danced under the party tree once more.  Squee!

I'd post some of the many many pictures I took, but I could be sued, apparently.  So instead enjoy this picture of this Hobbit-fied toilet paper roll holder in the Shire's Rest café.

After the tour (and the included sheep shearing demo by a local farmer) we set off on our way again due North East. 

Don't mind me.  I'm resigned to my fate of impending baaaaaaahldness.

After a few hours of driving along typically New Zealand winding roads, the light was failing, my stomach was churning, and we were ready to stop for the night.  So stop we have, in the town of Tairua.  This place is obviously a holiday mecca in the summer months, but at the moment it’s deadsville.  We are the only people staying in our hostel other than the guy running the place and his dog.  It’s nice after the too-cosy sleeping situation in Auckland.

Tomorrow bright and early we’re off to Hot Water Beach.  We have to get there between 7:30 and 9:30 to take advantage of the low tide.  Of course it’ll be cold, but apparently if we dig a hole in the sand, the water will be warm. 

Will it be?  Or will we freeze our ta-tas off?  Stay tuned!