Short Cut to What? Mushrooms!

We left Gisborne on Wednesday and after a 10 hour bus ride finally made it to Wellington. We managed to survive the trip with the help of lots of snacks (mostly Cadbury Oreo stuffed chocolate) and lots of sleep. We are lucky to have a friend who lives in the heart of Wellington so we’ve been enjoying some social time with her. Wellington is a really great place, it’s one of those cities that I immediately felt comfortable in, and that doesn’t happen to me very often.

Wellington feels very open and groovy and it’s been lovely to have a friend to stay with. Our first night we went to Cuba St (the main downtown stretch) and had really good pizza with paired with a tasty Pilsner ale. Yesterday we went to Te Papa museum and wandered around for nearly five hours. There were several different exhibits including one on Gallipoli that Weta studios had done. There were four or five huge statues of soldiers that had been in the war and a lot of videos and voice overs. I had to leave that exhibit early as it was too much for me. The statues were very life like and the whole display nearly gave me a panic attack.

My favorite display was the Bug Lab. This was a huge room that had exhibits on all types of bugs (done by Weta again). There were these amazing domes that were for different types of bugs and explained how these bugs eat, survive, or protect their homes. It was a very interactive exhibit that was really amazing and way too short.

Today we went on a Wellington movie tour which included a visit to Weta Cave. The tour took us up to Mt. Victoria where several scenes from The Lord of the Rings were filmed. I was really excited about this, we got to see the scenes “short cut to mushrooms”, “get off the road”, and the chase scene with the hobbits and the Nazgul. It was pretty incredible to be in the place where these scenes, that I quoted for most of my childhood, were created.

After tramping around the rain soaked mountain for about 45 minutes we were taken to Weta Cave. Outside we saw two of the original trolls from The Hobbit before heading into the gift shop/mini museum that displayed several hundred props from all the movies that Weta has worked on. I was surprised to see props from The Chronicles of Narnia and District 9 next to the Lord of the Rings. We were then taken into the actual studio and given a tour by a young guy who had grown up at Weta, his parents had worked on Lord of the Rings as prosthetic designers and still worked there. The studio was pretty small and crammed with props and costume pieces. There were swords, shields, bows and arrows, prosthetic arms and legs and much more. We saw the original Sarun and the Urukai leader who gets killed in the Fellowship of the Ring as well as many other characters.

The whole studio felt like a dream and was too much to take in at once. We were pretty stoked to see a poster for the bug lab exhibit that we had seen at the Te Papa the previous day. It made seeing the studio even better.

Now we are cuddled up at our friend’s flat enjoying the sound of rain mixed with the people on Cuba St. Tomorrow we are heading to the South Island!

I’m sorry if the post is rather rambling and boring, I am very tired.

I will write again when I can,

Cheers!