29/12/2017 - On the Trail of 'Lord of the Rings'

New Year's Eve is just around the corner - now it's time to head to Wellington. The weather at Cape Palliser didn't improve this morning either, so saying goodbye wasn't too difficult. We set off early in the morning to arrive in the capital of New Zealand on time. 
We had planned several stops for today as well. The closer you get to Wellington, the more filming locations from 'Lord of the Rings' you can find. Some of them are clearly marked with signs and information boards. Others are not so easy to find and require a lot of imagination. We relied on the online community to search for the film sets, which describes the surroundings of the filming locations in great detail. 

Our first stop was at the 'Kaitoke Regional Park'. This beautiful nature reserve was used as the filming location for the Elven city of Rivendell. Thanks to the information boards, which explain in detail where the camera was, where each building was located, and how the film scenes were created afterwards with various programs, you could get a good idea of it. Apart from the stone arch that Frodo crossed at the beginning of his journey, there is nothing left from the filming. Nevertheless, we felt an 'elvish' feeling. It's crazy to imagine that the actors from the film trilogy once stood here. 
After extensive sightseeing, we took a short walk through the adjacent forest area. We crossed a wooden suspension bridge and walked along a river through the 'enchanted' forest.

After a 30-minute drive, we reached another filming location. The New Zealand 'Hutt River' served, among other things, as the 'River Anduin'. We visited the place where Aragorn was woken up by his horse Brego by the river. fittingly, a completely unknown cat lay down on the rocky ground and imitated Aragorn for our pictures. We had to smile and then staged the cat. Since there was no signage here, we can only assume that we were at the right place.

Now we were heading to Wellington. For New Year's Eve, we treated ourselves to an Airbnb accommodation. However, the provider played a trick on us. It turned out that the booked accommodation had accidentally been listed online twice. However, this mishap could only be clarified on the day of arrival, so we had to act quickly again and find a new place to stay. But this time we succeeded much faster and so we arrived in our room in the late afternoon.
We used the time of uncertainty to visit a nearby lookout. From here, you have a beautiful view of the city and we got a sense of the scale.
We met our hostess at around 5:00pm and will stay in this accommodation until January 2nd. Our room offers a wonderful view of Wellington's Johnsonville district.