Day 27: Monday: March 17, Hutt Valley

Notice the rock strata. Imagine this, but exaggerated, and you have the rock formations that paralleled a good portion of the Great Ocean Road back in Australia.

We woke up this morning and had plenty of time to get to our destination that night. We hadn’t purposefully went to any LOTR filming sites so far in New Zealand and we decided we couldn’t leave without having done our tourist duty and seeing a LOTR site. (I say “purposefully” because we found out that we had bungee jumped a hundred yards from one and wandered around a town on the edge of a ford where another scene was filmed. I’m sure there are others we saw without noticing them.) We went to a quarry that is the filming site of Minas Tirith and Helm’s Deep and went to a park where a scene from Pelennor Fields was filmed.

Today we also took our first rock to the windshield. It’s a constant danger since almost every day we have gone over a section of road in the process of being resurfaced. Trucks here have a metal mesh over the lower part of their windshield to protect them from rocks.

We also stopped at another used bookstore. This one was in a small town and was run by a large guy with a scruffy beard. Two men came through the store while we were there and sat down to chat it up with the proprietor. We have seen this in small towns across NZ.

A house from the beginning of the 20th century mounted with a dish from the beginning of the 21st.

That night we stayed with a family we had met through the Smiths. They live on a farm outside of Wanganui in a 100yo house. The dad works at a private school in Wanganui where Prince Edward spent part of his gap year (between high school and college) volunteer teaching. Perhaps the best part was the 6yo. He spoke like a little gentleman. Then again, anyone who speaks softly with a British accent automatically seems like a gentleman.

Our host was shy, but it didn't impede his curiosity.