Weta Cave, Wellington, New Zealand
On the day after Christmas, we woke up to the discovery that it was Boxing Day, a term that we Americans only partially recognized as a British holiday of some sort. Our hotel clerk quickly informed us that Boxing Day was a public holiday in New Zealand, where the stores run huge sales and people get out and shop. Wellington, which had been a ghost town the day before, was now a madhouse of people.
For those familiar with the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, you will recognize Wellington as the hub of production for the cast and crew in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Wellington is home to the Weta Cave, a production studio that teamed up with Peter Jackson to create the visual and special effects for the movies, as well as design the weaponry, armor, and props. Although it is a fully functioning studio, Weta Cave opens daily to the public for free tours of its museum, in which they display props and costumes that they’ve created for various movies. For those of you not familiar with Lord of the Rings, Weta Cave has also worked extensively on other projects you may know—King Kong, Avatar, Narnia, Tin Tin, and District 9, to name a few.
(And for anyone wondering, a “weta” is a unique lil bug native to New Zealand!)
As part of our visit to Weta Cave, Matt and I paid homage to the LOTR cast by stopping for breakfast at the Chocolate Fish Café, a restaurant well known for being a hot spot for the cast and crew of LOTR. The café was cuter than I expected: it sat on the water overlooking the harbor, and had a variety of themed dining rooms from which to choose. We elected to sit in the indoor/outdoor courtyard area and dined on eggs and toast, served with a side of chocolate fish (aka, marshmallows shaped like fish and dipped in chocolate). With that energy boost, we were ready for Weta.
Weta fulfilled all my geeky LOTR dreams instantly: they had armor and props from the movies slung up on the walls for all to see, as well as huge statues of the three trolls that Bilbo meets in The Hobbit, a life-size Gollum, and an even bigger Urukhai. We were thrilled.
Most interesting was a special screening that Weta presented to museum visitors. Matt and I watched a 30-minute film detailing the SFX and design processes that Weta uses, as well as describing the history of the production studio and how its founders collaborated with Peter Jackson and other famous directors to create the films we love.
The Weta Cave staff even let me try out the bow and arrow that Legolas’s girlfriend uses in The Hobbit!
Once we’d exhausted all that Weta had to offer, Matt and I headed to our next museum, one of the more traditional type: the Museum of New Zealand, or Te Papa, which is free to the public! Te Papa had fascinating exhibits about Maori culture, including explanations of how the Maori traveled from different parts of the world to eventually reach New Zealand (which was the last country to be populated by humans!).
There were life-size reproductions of the waka boats that brought the Maori over from areas such as Easter Island.
We also learned quite a bit about how European settlers clashed with the Maori people, and how the two communities formed eventual relationships through treaties and land agreements (as well as war).
The museum also had exhibits about earthquakes, which was especially important because NZ sits in the Ring of Fire, where earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are not infrequent.
After exploring Te Papa and wiping out its amazing gift shop, we headed to Wellington’s outdoor shopping mall in search of good food. Our options were a bit limited because although stores open on Boxing Day, most other businesses stay closed, so we opted for conveyor-belt sushi. Once we were fed, we headed to the Wellington Cable Car, which costs about $7NZD and carries passengers to the top of the city, where the Wellington Botanic Gardens and Observatory sit.
The Botanic Gardens of Wellington are absolutely breathtaking. New Zealand has a fascinating array of flora, with green and colorful rainforest plants, as well as desert cacti, rose gardens, varieties of herbs, huge evergreen trees, bee hives, hydrangeas of every color, and pink and blue and white lupins.
We tramped through the gardens for about an hour, stopping to smell the lavender and rosemary, walking amongst Lady Norwood’s massive rose garden, saying hello to the bumblebees, and exploring the tropical bush around us. When the rain started to break out of the sky, however, we booked it back to the cable car, where we jumped in and headed back to the city center.
The city held a few more adventures for us that day: shopping for souvenirs, grabbing coffee and cake, and making a quick pit stop at Katherine Mansfield’s home. Katherine Mansfield holds a place dear to my heart as one of my very favorite short story writers. (If you’re interested, check out “Bliss!”). Seeing her home was a dream, and I can only imagine how poignant it will be to finally get to see Virginia Woolf’s home in England one day.
Later at the hotel, we spent about an hour chatting with the hotel clerk, who was born in India but lived for several years in London before moving to Wellington, which he loved. It was great comparing experiences of international travel, as well as exploring the differences in our lives. He and I bonded over our shared love of horses, and Matt and I left the conversation feeling like we’d made a new friend.
Even though it was almost 8pm, we headed to a nice dinner out on the harbor, where we looked at each other and immediately agreed that we should try to catch the 9:30 showing of Star Wars, something we’d both been eager to see since arriving in New Zealand. When the movie ended at midnight, we raced home, knowing we had a full day ahead, and needed our sleep!
