It's hard not to get Middle Earth fever when traveling around New Zealand. A simple drive to the next town and suddenly, you're approaching the Misty Mountains. I am a fan of the films, not a fanatic. I enjoyed them, found them to be entertaining. I may have even read the books about one or five times, but still, I'm a mere passing fan. I found it great to recognize the features and general look of Middle Earth in the surroundings, but everybody under the age of thirty, seems obsessed with it! Literally, every night of my first seven nights in the hostels, somebody would pop in a DVD. Every single time somebody popped in a DVD, on every single one of the first seven nights I spent in a hostel, it was The Fellowship of the Ring. Never once when somebody popped in a dvd on those first seven nights in the hostel was it the The Two Towers or the Return of the King. So everytime somebody popped in a DVD on every single night for the first seven nights I stayed in the hostels, I had to watch the very beginning of the story, wanting to move on, but being stuck, stuck in a particular place in a story, forced to repeat the beginning of this epic story, every single time somebody popped in a dvd, every single night, I, for the first seven nights, stayed in a hostel. As you can imagine, I found this to be quite annoying.
I began to play games with the various youths, those I did not do this every single time somebody popped in the Fellowship of the Ring DVD, but I did most nights. I would simply suggest that a certain thing, maybe a mountain or paddock is not too far from where we were.
Some young adult's eyes would alight like the fire writing across the face of the ring and they would say something like, "So that insignificant physical feature from scene 23 of the Fellowship of the Ring, that I would have never thought about except you, some complete stranger suggested that it is in fact the insignificant physical feature from scene 23, is near here?" Yeah, that sounds about right.
"I can't really remember, I was just driving on random roads....North?"
They didn't like that much.
I was expressing my general annoyance with a random kiwi on a hiking trail, "I mean look at this place! It's such an amazing country, with so much to see, you'd think these tourists would find something more productive to seek out that some bush Vigo Morgenstern pissed on in 2001."
"Bro, that whole movie was filmed in Wellington, right on Mt. Victoria. Peter Jackson just threw a bunch of mountains in here and there to make it looked varied."
This may have rocked my world a little bit. If this bit of information is true, then that speaks wonders for the films editing crew. I needed to know. I tried to hide the excitement building inside of me as well; I would be taking a ferry, the Picton, not Brandybuck, to Wellington the very next day.
As I walked amongst the forests of Wellington's Mt. Victoria, I couldn't help but feel the Middle Earth fever. The random bad-toothed kiwi proved correct, this was where so much was filmed. Everyone knows it, tourist walk everywhere in the park, snapping photos of trees, rocks, and anything else that they might be able to spot in the Fellowship of the Ring later that night at the hostel. I was walking with my Lonely Planet, seeing if they had any mention of some specific sights from (they didn't), when a man approached me, "Hey bro, looking for Lord of the Rings stuff?"
I scoffed, "No, I just want to go through a lovely stroll through this beautiful park. Where is the lookout?"
He was heading in that direction so we walked together. We passed numerous people hiding under tree roots from the dark riders. I was able to needle a few sights out of him without giving the impression that I was a Lord of the Rings tourist. He separated from me and I walked by three more youths hiding from the Nazgul under a different set of tree roots. I found my own set that I swear was the correct roots. The entrance to the Halls of the Dead is the only confirmed landmark I spotted and I would have never been able to tell if it was not marked. It looked nothing like the film.
For all the Lord of the Rings sights, there is very few exploitation of such resources. Two tours, one ran by Peter Jackson's company. There is no brochure/map of all the sights near Wellington (I know, because I didn't check). It gives me a bit of respect for the kiwis. If it was America, there be costumed photo-ops near every rock and bush in the country.
After breaking down and realizing that I do in fact have some interest in seeing stuff from Lord of the Rings, I decided to make my own pilgrimage to Mt. Doom, though it is much more pleasant trip by Hyundai than by foot. Mt. Doom or Ngauruhoe as people once called it ages ago before the films, lies in the heart of Tonagariro National Park, setting for Mordor. The landscape looked a lot like Mordor, but it seemed like a much cheerier place without all the orcs and the creepy tower with the glowing eye. Mt. Doom just looked like a volcano.
The Kiwi from the South Island proved to be correct. Much of the look was studio trickery. Scenes from near Queenstown will be instantly followed with scenes from the Northern part of the South Island, two completely different landscapes. He cut it all together. Finding Middle Earth in New Zealand is either tricky or easy, depending on how you think about it. Everywhere a person goes in the country, the feel of the movie will follow. Middle Earth is New Zealand...just modified.
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