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Archive for January, 2018

Analog: The Great Coast Road and Punakaiki Pancake Rocks and Blowholes, New Zealand

Posted in Analog, Personal, Photography, Travel, tagged new zealand, west coast new zealand, where the stars are strange on January 29, 2018| Leave a Comment »

On the second day of New Zealand summer, Jeff and I took a ferry across the Cook Strait, tasted wine at a Blenheim winery and drove halfway down the entire South Island on the West Coast, surviving some hairpin turns on the Great Coast Road, making spontaneous stops at Tasman Sea beaches and famous rock formations and then hurtling south past a glorious sunset and under a brilliant canopy of crystal-clear constellations on the clearest night we’d had yet.

It was a long, glorious day from Wellington to Franz Josef Glacier.

New Zealand, we found, has nicknames for its major highways — Highway 5 south out of Rotorua is the “Thermal Explorer Highway” — and the Great Coast Road lives up to its name. After enduring mostly cloudy skies for much of our North Island escapade, we were overjoyed to see beautiful, golden sunshine as we drove down the South Island’s beautiful West Coast.

The Great Coast Road offers access to a number of small Tasman Sea beaches. We happened to pull off at the Fox River Beach, where we discovered the tide was low enough for us to cross the rock-lined river mouth…

…to access a really pleasant sandy beach with towering rock formations.

Oh, and a beach cave:

We also took one of my favorite photos of us together on the trip at this beach:

After brushing the sand off our feet, we got back in the car and continued racing southward, trying to see as much of the West Coast for as long as we could before the sun set.

Fortunately, we arrived at Punakaiki at just the right time.

Punakaiki itself is a “blink and you’ll miss it” community on the West Coast Road. To access the Pancake Rocks (which are limestone formations 30 million years in the making), you park in a car park on the east side of the highway, cross the highway and start walking on a paved trail. It couldn’t be simpler.

As for the “Blowholes” part? The tide was too low for us to experience the sea waters roiling and bursting about the limestone formations. I was happy enough that we got to enjoy the view on such a fine evening.

After we’d walked the entire trail and relished the sunlight, we got a small pizza at Pancake Rocks Cafe and then continued our drive southward under what would be the only night sky clear enough for us to see the stars. Ironically — because our trip hashtag was #wherethestarsarestrange, in reference to being in the southern hemisphere — I couldn’t find a safe spot in the utter darkness to pull off the highway so we could enjoy the stars.

I guess we’ll just have to go back.

A selection of these photos can be purchased as prints at prints.christhedunn.com.

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Analog: Tongariro National Park and Mount Victoria, New Zealand

Posted in Analog, Personal, Photography, Travel, tagged new zealand, tongariro national park, wellington, where the stars are strange on January 22, 2018| 1 Comment »

The day after we toured the Hobbiton Movie Set, we hiked a short ways on New Zealand’s largest active volcano. It was very cold and windy, but I guess that’s the better alternative to violently erupting.

Before driving halfway up Mount Ruapehu, which also happens to be the highest point on the North Island, we hiked the ridge track. In retrospect, one of the waterfalls tracks might have been better — plus, the Forbidden Pool scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers was filmed at one of those waterfalls.

But, after enjoying the lush rolling hills of the Shire, it was nice to get back into real mountains.

Of course, as soon as we were driving south outside the park, the clouds parted over us and so we pulled over for this quintessential New Zealand scene:

We then drove on to Wellington, where we would stay the night before boarding the ferry for our South Island adventures. Before turning in for the night, we visited the Weta Cave and then, on a whim, went to Mount Victoria.

Mount Victoria is a hill in the middle of Wellington that offers excellent views of the city and of Cook Strait. There are some residential areas on the slopes of the hill, plus a tunnel runs underneath to connect the sides of the city.

A couple of scenes from The Lord of the Rings were filmed on Mount Victoria as well (the hobbits hiding from the Ringwraiths, plus Dunharrow), which only deepened our appreciation for talented film location scouts. But the web of trails, with many variations in grade, is excellent for anyone looking for exercise. We shared the trail with bikers and runners alike, as well as two women walking their dogs and cat.

A selection of these photos can be purchased as prints at prints.christhedunn.com.

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Analog: Hobbiton Movie Set, New Zealand

Posted in Analog, Personal, Photography, Travel, tagged hobbiton movie set, new zealand, where the stars are strange on January 3, 2018| 1 Comment »

There are no hobbits in Hobbiton.

Before we left for our New Zealand honeymoon, I joked that the whole trip would be a failure if we didn’t find hobbits at the Hobbiton Movie Set. We spent several hours there and saw nary a hobbit, but our evening banquet tour was nevertheless one of the most delightful things I’ve ever experienced.

We booked the evening banquet tour, which was a solid choice because:

Our tour group was the last on the property, so there were no groups crowding behind us and the hardcore fans among us could lag behind the more casual tourists;
We ate to our hearts’ delight during the hearty, rich and plentiful banquet at the Green Dragon Inn, which was especially welcome after a couple days of light eating;
We had a second, twilight tour of the movie set after the banquet, so we got to see the hobbit holes lit up and had the entire set to ourselves.

The actual movie set is not super large — when we watched The Fellowship of the Ring recently, I could see how economical the cinematographers were in utilizing every angle of the set to make it seem like Hobbiton was a bucolic sprawl when in fact the entire walking paths could easily be trod inside of an hour. But this just added to the magic of getting to see the set in person. Even Jeff, a cynic, was enchanted by the evening’s end.