Wonderful weekend - Wellington, Weta, and Wairarapa

We are really very fortunate to live so close (2.5 hours by car) to Wellington, the capital city of NZ.  We have been down to visit numerous times, and have used it as a transit hub on a few other occasions.  We previously described it as a mini-San Francisco, since it sits geographically on a bay, and has hills with charming residential neighborhoods popping up all over from the city center.  Culturally it feels pretty hip and urban - good restaurants and cafes, museums and sports stadiums, and visible ethnic diversity.  Still, with just over 400,000 people in the urban area, it remains an approachable, safe and cute little city.

Over the long Easter weekend (both Good Friday and Easter Monday are federal and school holidays, so the kids and Jen were off for four days) we decided to make another trip down to Windy Wellington and then also to explore the Wairarapa region in the Southeastern most part of the North Island.  We come away strongly suggesting a long weekend trip to the Wairarapa!

Saturday morning we woke and drove straight to Te Papa, the national museum of NZ.  Every exhibit we have been to at Te Papa has been unbelievable, made more remarkable by the fact that entrance is free!  This time we went back to "Natural Forces" and to some historical exhibits on NZ, and we went to the touring exhibit by DreamWorks.  We really enjoyed the way DreamWorks walked us from their initial film concepts and through to the final production of the movie.  It really made us appreciate how much thought, time and creativity goes into making the movies that we enjoy and are part of our families collective experience.  Here is Lindsay doing a little Kung Fu Panda!

Leaving Te Papa, we drove to Miramar, a suburb of Wellington, and to the Weta Workshop, also known as the Weta Cave.  This was another of our geeky must-do Lord of the Rings related visits.  Weta Workshop is a small special effects and props workshop that movie studios use for their movies.  And their huge claim to fame, or break-out moment came when Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings director) came to them to do the props and effects for the LOTR trilogy back in the late 1990's.  (Subsequently, they have done the props and effects for Avatar, Narnia, the Hobbit trilogy and now are working on more Avatar sequels.)  Here are the girls out front of the studio with a troll.

Arriving at the Workshop for the Tour, we were first amazed at how tiny of a company this appears to be.  Despite its worldwide notoriety and regard, it is still just a small enterprise operating out of a warehouse with adjoining studios.  Most of the people working there are contractors, not employees, signing on for short term gigs.  The sense we got from our limited interactions with those contractors on the tour is that working for Weta is comparable to working for google or apple among techie geeks - this is the top spot for set or costume design.

We did the hour long tour and movie to follow and came away with yet more appreciation for how much detail goes into movie making, specially the Lord of the Rings movies.  The number of sword designs that the company went though, for instance, in coming to a final set piece for Gandalf's sword or the Orc swords, is remarkable.  Ditto for mask and costume design.

Our favorite stories we gleamed on the tour were about the sword that Aragorn used, the fact that it was real, and that he actually carried it around Wellington while filming (with a permit and note of explanation for the police) - all because he used a real-life weighted sword for his battle scenes.  And the story of the scene at Helm's Deep where Aragorn tosses Gimli was explained - the dwarf he tossed was actually a foam and rubber dummy and if you watch the split second shot in the movie you can apparently just make out that the Gimli's arms bend rather unnaturally while he is being tossed : )

Back in the car, we then drove almost two hours out of town, up and around Lower Hutt and to the Wairarapa, an area of wineries, farms, coastline and some awesome natural wonders.  We camped two nights at this quiet DOC site at Putangirua Pinnacles.  Here are our lovely little girls setting up camp.

The Pinnacles themselves are a sort of "badlands" of eroded pillars, or pinnacles, that have formed as an ancient sea bed is carved out by rainfall.  The area actually became a filming location for LOTR in the third movie, Return of the King.  From the DOC website...
"The eerie scenes in The Return of the King as Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli ride along the Dimholt Road to meet the Army of the Dead were filmed against the surreal backdrop of the Pinnacles."
There were some pretty interesting formations just an hours hike from the camp site.  We did this walk in the morning and Jen got some pics of the formations. This picture doesn't quite give a great sense of the height and massiveness of these pillars, which were easily over a hundred feel tall.

After the hike, we drove down to Cape Palliser and the southernmost tip of the North Island.  We climbed the 251 steps from the carpark up to the Lighthouse to gaze down at the beach and toward the South Island, which was clearly visible (though barely in this photo here.)

Thats a lot of steps....

The Lighthouse, which was built in 1897, and was lighted by oil until the 1950s, completed a North Island journey of sorts for us - we have now been to Cape Reinga on the very northern tip, and to Cape Palliser on the very southern tip.

On our way back toward the campsite, we stopped at a rocky beach to view a seal colony.  First we took a cute shot of Jen holding the lighthouse in her palm (get some perspective, people!)

While Jen and Pete watched a large number of pups playing together in a tide pool, the girls did some rock climbing to get a birds eye view of the entire beach (also because they knew it would be smart to occupy themselves since Jen has generally been reluctant to tear herself away from taking pictures of baby seals.)

Finally the girls walked back down to where we were, and then Lauryn got a great surprise.  Walking on top of a rock, she heard a very LOUD growl, and shrieked in a bit of terror.  She had walked on top of a rock under which a pup was resting. Very funny to us.  A little scary to her.

Here are two cute pics of the seals - the first of some pups at play on the rocks above the frothing surf.

And then this one was of this curious little pup who was just swimming in yoga-like positions in the tidal pool.  He (she?) was very entertaining, and kept it up for 15 or so minutes.  This looked a bit like a seal version of triangle pose, as he/she is holding her front and back fins together.

After peeling Jen away, we went back to the campsite for a great time playing bocce, and an excellent campsite dinner. Jen and Pete set out for another hike to see the Pinnacles by dusk, but realized that we would miss the actual sunset there and that it would be dark by the time we arrived.  But all was not lost...on our way back to the campsite we had great views out to the ocean, and Jen got this great photo walking out of the Pinnacles, with the sun setting over the Pacific.

A rough night of sleep followed, interrupted as it was by a fierce wind storm in the middle of the night.  Amazed that our tents withstood the gales (our neighbor was not so fortunate - we heard a horrible ripping sound in the middle of the night, followed by cursing and moving of tents), we packed back up in the morning and took off for one more adventure in the area - the Patuna Chasm Walk in the Ruakokopatuna valley of the Wairarapa.  We did not plan this one all that well, thinking it was just a short walk off the road.   It was much more of an adventure than that - and well worth it!  From the website..."The famous Patuna Chasm is a two kilometer long labyrinth of towering limestone caverns and tunnels." The chasm is located on private land, so first we drove to a farm and we were led by the farmer (at high speeds) by car on dirt roads to a parking spot. From there the hike and adventure began, with ominous signs telling us that we were in for a "four hour walk" and some lessons in flexibility to our day planning. After a long tramp through sheep and cattle pastures, we entered the chasm via a series of ladders, ropes and scrambling.

And, finally, we were down in the Patuna Chasm, in ankle to knee deep running water.  The limestone walls surrounding us ranged from 30 to 100 feet deep in spots, and would occasionally narrow and get darker, almost as if we were in a tunnel.  Here is a picture of Lindsay and Lauryn in the deepest part of the chasm.

And here is Jen doing her best to stay warm!

Our first actual destination in the chasm was a beautiful waterfall that cascaded down the moss covered walls.  It was stunning.

After the waterfall, we walked downstream for an hour or so through varying caverns and tunnel-like structures, occasionally scrambling with the use of ladders and ropes to stay relatively dry (these were built into the rocks where the river would perhaps get to chest height.)

At one point we realized we were in "eel-infested waters", but these were not the shrieking eels of "Princess Bride" fame.  Rather they were HUGE but harmless river eels that looked to be a lot more wary of us than we were of them : )

The river and the rocks were slippery and made for a real challenge, so we were really beat when we got back out.  Here is a beautiful picture that Jen took of the river running over the slick rocks.

What a cool hike - if you ever get to the Wairarapa, this would be high on our list of recommended things to do!