The studios used for shooting the movies are placed in Wellington and as such the movies are all the rage here! I didn't have time to see anything in Wellington, which is a bit of a shame, but I had a busy schedule ahead of me
I will go to Lake Taupo on the 7-8th to climb a vulcano, Rotorua on the 9th to visit Hobbiton and dive a little deeper into the Maori culture. On the 10th I will be in Waitomo to do a bit of spelunkin in the massive caves there. The 11th will be a travel day up to the capital Auckland and the 12th I will go to the top of the northern island. So quite a busy schedule and I still have a 3 day paraglider course I need to do before I leave for Singapore on the 18th.
In Wellington I rendavoued with my mountain climbing buddy, a sweet hippy girl from Austria called Kiki, that I had met earlier in my trip and together we set our sights on the biggest challenge so far. The Tongariro Alpine Crossing, a 19 km hike going through an active vulcanic area and rated among the top 10 one day walks in the world. The hiking route is haunted by random weather and the track is closed more often than it is open. And as if this wasn't enough there is the option to climb mount Ngaueuhoe, an active super vulcano, a mean looking mountain, covered in loose scree consisting of vulcanic ash and rocks with razor sharp edges that will tumble down on the poor bastards below if you are not carefull...
Driving up to Lake Taupo we could see the mountain range in the horizon and I perfectly understand why Sir Peter Jackson chose this mountain to be Mount Doom in his movies
But before we get to the unpleasantries we had a half day in Taupo to gather our strenght. Lake Taupo is the biggest lake in New Zealand and the weather was stunningly good. A nice little city and a place I could have seen myself spending a little more time just dazing away.
But that was not to be and the pickup was at 5.30 next morning so I headed for an early bed.
Hvor er der flot. Jeg modtog i går bestilling på Ringenes herre filmene fra en dame der lige var kommet hjem fra New Zealand. Så fik jeg også lige størrelsen på den flækkede klippe forklaret, ligesom heller ikke Christchurch forekom hende som nogen hyggelig eller livlig by ovenpå jordskælvet.
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