26th July 2025

Greetings from the southern tip of New Zealand’s North Island!  I arrived in Wellington, pronounced “Willington” in the Kiwi accent, on a cold late-July evening and was so excited to be there!  The day after my arrival I was due to do my first of two full day Lord of the Rings tours that I’d booked for my time in New Zealand – one for here in the North Island, the other for the South Island later in my journey.  I actually saw a few other LOTR filming locations on the way there.

After checking out of my cosy cabin of an accommodation near the shores of beautiful Lake Taupō, I drove southwards and into the stunning Tongariro National Park, along a beautiful stretch of the shoreline of this gorgeous lake.  I was not heading to do the famous Tongariro Alpine Crossing I might add, New Zealand’s most famous hike taking up to eight hours along a 20km route, with an elevation change of 1200m.  This was not for me for a number of reasons: firstly I like to see and appreciate beautiful places and not exhaust myself in them, secondly it’s an A to B hike so not easy to do when one is driving alone, and thirdly it was the middle of winter and not a good time apparently to do the hike.  Despite this, I did encounter a few people on my NZ journey who had done it during their time there, and highly respect them for it.

I was heading instead to simply enjoy the natural beauty of the National Park itself by stopping off at a number of places within its boundaries.  The Tongariro National Park was founded back in 1887, being the country’s first national park, and in fact the sixth to be established worldwide.  It is around 300 square miles in size, and encompasses three stunning, snow-capped volcanic peaks all lined up in a row: from north-east to south-west, Mt Tongariro (1978m), Mt Ngauruhoe (2291m) and Mt Ruapehu (2797m).  Mt Ruapehu is in fact the highest mountain on the North Island, while Mt Ngauruhoe is legendary to my mind for being the filming location of Mt Doom in the Lord of the Rings.

In fact, my first stop off for the day was also an LOTR filming spot, the lovely Tawhai Falls, also known as Gollum’s Pool.  It is the location for the scene in which Gollum was nearly killed by Faramir at “The Forbidden Pool”, until Frodo says that the two were bound, which saved the creature’s life.  I could quite clearly make the scene out while there, which was cool, and it was also a beautiful, refreshing place to be and have all to myself.

I then headed up to the gateway to Tongariro National Park, the rather crudely-sounding Whakapapa (as “wh” is pronounced “f” in the Māori language, you will now understand what I mean, lol!)  This is tourist- and ski-central for the Park, and as I was visiting in the depths of NZ’s ski season, the place was heaving!  After parking up, I took a ride up the fantastically-named “Sky Waka” cable-car to the top of the ski slope, near the summit of Mt Ruapehu.  It felt a little extortionate for what it was to be honest, having forked out £35 for the international visitors’ ticket (£4 more than a local’s…!) for a five-minute ride to the top and then around half-an-hour later back down again.  At the top there was only an equally extortionate café-restaurant, with no hiking opportunities or anything – just the ski down for the skiers, and the five-minute ride back down again for people like me.

There were of course the incredible views, which actually did make it worth it – amazing mountain vistas and snowy fields all around, while in the far distance you could see over the vast and beautiful green plains of the North Island.  On the way up, there were also incredible views towards Mt Ngauruhoe next-door, the volcanic cone that is the formidable Mt Doom in the Lord of the Rings.  Although being covered in snow, it didn’t look quite like the desolate and foreboding mountain of Mordor as it was presented in the film.  You could even see as far as Mt Taranaki 60 miles away to the west, on the west coast of the North Island, on this gorgeously crisp and clear blue-sky day.  This mountain is in fact the Lonely Mountain, or Erebor, in the Hobbit film series, though I will write more on that in my next as I planned to travel there shortly after.

My final LOTR location to be visited on this day was actually simply driving along the stunning Desert Road which runs down the eastern side of these triple volcanic peaks, where the scenes of Frodo and Sam at the Gates to Mordor were filmed.  It was actually quite surprising to indeed be driving through the desolate Rangipo Desert rather than the lush green I had enjoyed until then, so-formed due to a combination of the triple-volcanic peaks to the west creating a rain shadow for east-going rainclouds and the poor volcanic soil that covers the land there.  I wasn’t stopping though, as I had a four-hour journey to Wellington ahead of me and wanted to get to my accommodation before sunset, which was around 5.30pm in the middle of this southern hemisphere winter.

While the journey was mostly uneventful, there was one major annoyance which I felt really bad about, and it took me a few days to process this and get over it to be honest.  I was stopped by a traffic policeman and given a speeding ticket!  He had even put on his flashing lights to pull me over!  This has never happened to me before – oh, the shame…!  And there was I a number of times tutting to myself passing by many drivers pulled over by cops on numerous previous visits to the USA – this time it was me, and I just cringed every time another car drove past us as he was dishing out the ticket.  Fortunately it was only NZ$30 as I was only a little over the limit.

I do feel a bit of an explanation is needed here to do me justice, although I avoided trying to share this with the copper – I was just submissive and apologetic instead.  Anyway, in the UK, although it is technically illegal to drive just 1mph over the speed limit, most police forces have an unwritten rule of allowing 10% + 2mph over the speed limit – so in a 70mph zone, you could technically get away with driving up to 79mph.  This also seems to be my experience of driving in the USA, where everyone seems to drive around 10mph over the limit on the freeways.  I just need to constantly remind myself as I drive internationally, that not all other countries are like this!

So I had just overtaken a guy going around 98kmph in a 100kmph area, so overtook him at around 110kmph.  As I slowed down after him, I could see in my rear-view mirror that the chap seemed annoyed that I’d done this, and seemed to want to speed up to catch up with me again.  I didn’t feel comfortable with this, so carried on a bit with the 110kmph to get a way ahead of him.  This is when the man in blue clocked me going in the opposite direction, and when he did a u-turn with his blue lights flashing my heart sank.  The guy I had overtaken then caught up with us and overtook – he must have loved seeing this!  As mentioned, I felt very ashamed of myself, but tried to bear in mind that it was a lesson learned, and a good reminder again that other countries have different laws and customs to my own, particularly on the road.  Lo and behold, the ticket was waiting for me when I got back home again five weeks later (they send it through the post!), and I duly paid up my £13 to the New Zealand Police Force online, thinking I’d actually got a real bargain there!

That evening, I checked into a large and very classic accommodation in a great dame of a Victorian building in the hilly suburbs of Wellington.  I was so excited about doing a LOTR full day tour the next day, and I went to bed a giddy man!

The tour started early, and I needed to get a bus into the city centre of Wellington and be picked up from a hotel there.  The tour guide / driver was just excellent – she was from Alaska and came from a film-making background, so knew a lot about the movie industry in general.  She was also clearly very much a LOTR and Hobbit fan too, and her passion and interest in taking us to the filming locations were palpable.  She filled the day not only with the great locations, but also with fascinating trivia and anecdotes about the films, the actors, and the director Peter Jackson.  There were nine of us in total on the tour, so she called us “The Fellowship” with her being Gandalf, lol!  It was so awesome to spend the day with like-minded fans, and everyone came up with quotes at various times throughout the day: “Get off the road!”, “Show us the meaning of haste!”, and “I’m going an adventure!”, to name but a few…!  As with back in Hobbiton, I felt I was with my tribe once more.

We visited the filming locations for the Anduin River, Isengard, Rivendell and the Outer Shire, passed by the Helm’s Deep location which you were not allowed inside due to it being an actual functioning quarry, drove through the Miramar area of the city, nicknamed “Wellington’s Hollywood” due to it being the film-making centre of New Zealand, and spent a good part of the afternoon visiting the fantastic Weta Workshop located there, famous for making all the incredible props and costumes for the films, as well as many others.  We also had a nice lunch in a rural restaurant on the outskirts of Wellington, caught the sunset over the city from the top of Mt Victoria, and I also splashed out a bit on an awesome little figure of Samwise Gamgee, who I think I mentioned in my last is my favourite character.  We all could do with a friend like unwavering, steadfast and faithful Sam I’d say, the real hero of the story.

Before the tour set off in the morning, I actually managed to fit in a bit of wandering around the hotel pick-up area, which just happened to be around the corner from New Zealand’s Parliament Buildings.  The very stately original building there was completed in 1922, while the rather unusual addition nicknamed “The Beehive” for obvious reasons was completed in 1981.  Architectural monstrosity or absolute genius, I’m still trying to reach my conclusions on that one! I very much appreciated a stone laid in the original building to commemorate refurbishment that was completed there in 1995, and subsequently opened again by our very own Queen Elizabeth II, also referred to here as “Queen of New Zealand” – nice!  Though I did try to block out the fact that this place was also recently the ministerial home for some time to the country’s very divisive leader referred to as “Cindy” and by other names I noted on my travels in my previous blog.  Driving around town, I also noticed a bumper sticker on a car in front of me, with New Zealand’s very own “MAGA” acronym: “Make Ardern Go Away”.  I found this hilarious, but unfortunately the traffic lights had already turned green before I managed to take a picture of this!  Well done New Zealanders on having been able to do that, please teach us how to do the same with our own…

In fact, before this recent blot, New Zealand actually became home to one of the world’s earliest parliamentary democracies, achieving this status in 1857, 28 years before the UK, and the third country in the world to do so after the USA and Switzerland.  It also led the way in voting rights, granting universal suffrage to men in 1879 and women in 1893 – these dates were 1918 and 1928 in the UK respectively.  After initially Okiato, near Waitangi, and then Auckland, Wellington became the country’s capital city in 1865 (the same year my house was built!) following concerns that the South Island might break away from the North Island as a separate colony.  Thus this more central city of Wellington fitted the bill better, and has remained the country’s seat of power ever since.  It is the country’s third largest city after Auckland and Christchurch, with a metropolitan population of around 500,000 people, and I have to say, it was the only city in New Zealand that I didn’t really like.  I felt a very slight snootiness to the place, people were less friendly and made eye contact less even in the service sector, and the place just didn’t seem built to be a functioning capital city. The flat area of land the downtown area is built on felt too small and tightly compacted, and while the surrounding steep hills make it a very beautiful location, it also leads to some really severe traffic jams and irritated drivers, particularly around rush hour. There seemed to be an overly disproportionate number of blue-hair and nose-ring type people, which let’s be honest brings the usual concomitant type of self-righteousness to the people. It wasn’t my favourite city.

Before I left Wellington to head back up north again, I still felt I needed to do the city a bit more justice, and thus spent the morning exploring more of the downtown area.  I parked up at the city’s most popular visitor attraction, the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, or simply the Te Papa Museum, and enjoyed a stroll along the harbour area before its 10am opening time and before the rest of the city woke up on this Sunday morning.

Before 1855, the British who had settled in the city from 1840 onwards did not have too much space between the hilly land and the sea.  Quite remarkably, on the evening of 23^rd January 1855, the massive 8.2 magnitude Wairarapa Earthquake hit (even larger than the more recent 6.3 magnitude Christchurch Earthquake in 2011), and while only causing nine deaths, it also caused a massive land uplift on the Wellington shoreline which created enough space for the city to build its all-important itnernational harbour!  The powers that be must have known the British Empire needed an additional port in the area!

On this day, there was a lovely little food market in the harbour area, with an egg stall doing a particularly roaring trade – there were at least 30 people queuing up there for their Sunday morning eggs!  I also headed along the city’s iconic commercial hub along Cuba Street, which admittedly wasn’t too happening this early in the morning, and onto the Embassy Theatre which was home to the World Premieres of both “Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” and “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”.  I remember seeing both these premieres on TV, and being particularly impressed by the memorable 500m-long red carpet which the stars walked along for the latter, 79m longer than the former which at the time set a new Guinness World Record at 421m.

When the Te Papa Museum opened at 10am, I did the rounds, with lots of interesting displays on native Kiwi wildlife, the geological dynamics and dangers of the country including quite an unnerving earthquake simulator, and displays on both Māori (Polynesian New Zealanders) and Pākehā (European New Zealanders) arrivals.  As mentioned in a previous blog, I remained astonished that the former only preceded the latter by around 300 years, before which the islands had never even seen human beings!  I also remained sad at how rapidly and deeply this negatively affected the local wildlife with the bringing of non-native predators in particular, and I continue to support the country’s desire to be predator-free by 2050.  I balked at the NZ$35 entry cost for international visitors compared to the free admission for New Zealanders though…!  There was also a lovely Vanuatu event there, with people from this tiny Pacific island nation getting together for a chat, and some fantastic singing and dancing – a bit of a precursor I thought for the next part of my journey after New Zealand through the South Pacific.

After having achieved my fill of Wellington and its sights, I said goodbye to New Zealand’s capital city, and fired up the car again to continue northwards on my North Island Road Trip.  This of course is to be continued in my next!