Lord of the Rings

Yesterday, Thursday, we were just lazing around. Towards the evening we went for a walk on the beach and saw a strange method of catching fish. Intrigued, we spoke to one of the “anglers”:

You hang hooks and bait on a very long (can easily reach 100m or more) fishing line. Using a vehicle, let’s call it a “sledge” (similar to the one that divers use), the fishing line and bait are driven out into the sea via GPS and positioned. The line is pulled in using an electric motor winch. That's just fishing for lazy people.

We spent today, Friday, in Matamata in the film set “Hobbiton” from the film “Lord of the Rings”. The guide did a great job and talked a lot about the tricks that are needed, among other things, to get all the hobbits to be the same size in the film and to be able to show the relative size to the “normal” sized creatures.

Also that an entire tree was dug up in Matamata and rebuilt in Hobbiton, for which 250 thousand artificial leaves were imported from Taiwan and after the director was not satisfied with the green, hired students painted the leaves in the desired green.

Furthermore, an apple tree had been completely “de-fruited” and hung with artificial plums.

Sounds kind of complicated and weird - and it was.

Karin was blown away and briefly mutated into a child again.

The entire landscape there was wonderful - beautiful - very varied and yet homogeneous and above all green, green green.

We have chosen exactly the right time of year for New Zealand - even if it is pretty fresh here and there - because spring here makes everything awaken and blossom.