17 posts tagged “new zealand”

 

Wow. Just wow. Those guys are SO good, and SO much fun!

When I found out that FoTC were touring the US this spring, and that they were doing a show in DC the day after Easter, when we were going to be there visiting anyway, I was pretty excited! We don't get HBO, but Nikki had told us about the show last winter, and we watched the 1st season DVD with her when she was home, and pretty much were hooked. Then when we went to New Zealand in November, it somehow helped me "get" them even more... The whole country seems to me gentle and understated, and slightly offbeat (and I mean that in a very good way).

Unfortunately, the tickets I got were way the heck up in the back corner of the venue (DAR / Constitution Hall), but we were still able to see well, and the sound was fine. There were a few times when a light was shining right in our faces, but there were video monitors mounted high beside the stage, so that was good for seeing facial expressions and so on. And I think my camera zoomed fairly well, considering the darkness and distance.

 

 

I bought a Band Meeting t-shirt before the show...

 

 

To the left is the graphic that was displayed on the video monitor before the concert began.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kristen Schaal (aka Mel) opened for the guys, and she was hilarious! Here, she was performing a one-act play, a sort of love triangle among the pot, spoon, and lid. She "practiced" a number of different styles of jokes on us, from self-deprecating, to political.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are my best photos, not all that great, but you get the idea...

I neglected to take a photo of Nigel (the NZ Symphony Orchestra), but he was also very good, and even got to speak once or twice.

They really did a lot of songs; they explained that if they stop singing and talked for a while, not to worry, they would sing another song soon. Or, if you came for the talking, you'd have to wait till the song was over. I would have actually liked a little more talking (in those adorable kiwi accents), like about the "Issues", saving the whales, etc, but it may partly have been because of the time they had to take to shush stupid people in the audience who were calling out song names.

They came out in robot suits, and started with "Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor", very disco-y with lights and smoke and dancing, lots of fun. They admonished DC to do a better job of keeping in touch, just so they wouldn't worry about how everyone is doing... Then (not in order), they also did "Hurt Feelings" (video below - not mine, but from this show), "The Most Beautiful Girl in the Room", "Business Time", "If You're Into It", "Motha 'Uckas" (that was the one with Bret on drums), "Hiphopapotamus vs Rhymnocerus", "Bowie" (nipple antennae and all), "Busdriver song", "Ex-Girlfriends" (with the women in the audience doing the oooo's as directed by Bret), "Humans are Dead" (WITH the binary solo!), "I'm not Crying", "Sugalumps" (involving an a capella final refrain with dancing - see mstresbabette's video from the show), "You Don't Have to be a Prostitute", "Jenny" (old video below - I couldn't take any video, being so far away, but this is one of my favorites...), and a new ballad about Stana, very funny!  So that's a lot of singing!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Excellent, excellent show! We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves!

[NOTE: I wrote this post in October 2009 - I realized I had never finished writing my posts about New Zealand, which is a crime because the Tongariro Crossing was one of the most exhilirating experiences of my life. I think I was trying to think of enough eloquent things to say about it, but there simply aren't words - at least, that I'm capable of writing - so for now I'll at least get the photos up here and allow them to speak for themselves...]

Photos are in chronological order... hover over the group photos for titles.

We took a shuttle bus from town and got to the trail head around 6:30am.

 

 

 

2 hours in...

 

This was one of the scariest (but coolest) things I've ever done. The wind was blowing so hard across the snowy ridge that I crawled up the final slope (see the wet knees)!

This is the mountain that played Mt Doom in the Lord of the Rings movies... (sans snow of course)

6 hours in (after waiting for Alex to come back down from Ngauruhoe)... beginning to descend.

 

After 7 hours...

After 8 hours... (warming back up as we came down)

At this point, we semi-jogged the rest of the way because we were nearing our cut-off time to make the return shuttle (due to the summit trips).

Just had to post one photo from today, even though I'm not nearly caught up yet on my other posts...

 

This was an hour-and-a-half side trip off of the 19k Tongariro Crossing that we did today. Alex, meanwhile, was scaling Mt Doom behind me there.

More awesome pics to follow later, it was just such a great experience I had to share right away! 

[10/14/09 EDIT: Yikes! I never got back to posting about the most awesome experience of my life! I promise to do that before its anniversary rolls around next month... or at least the photos]

When I first was researching where to go in New Zealand, I chose the southern end of Lake Taupo for its proximity to national parks that sounded like they had good hikes through terrain we don't have at home (volcanoes and such). I also had seen from Omori LakeHouse's website that they were near the Tongariro Crossing, which I thought sounded like something interesting. But happily, Alex had meantime done more research into the area than I had, and when he learned that along the Tongariro Crossing, you could climb the slopes of Mt Doom (Mt Nguaruhoe), the deal was sealed in his mind. I was still thinking it would be along the lines of a strenuous hike through the hills at home, though I had read the warnings online about very changeable weather and so on.

Almost as soon as we walked in the door at the LakeHouse, Raewyn asked us if we planned to "do the crossing" while we were there, and if so, the next day was supposed to be fine weather for it. We said "sure", so she gave us a phone number to call for one of the shuttle services that takes you to the beginning of the crossing in the early morning and picks you up at the end of the day at the other end. I called the number and eventually worked out with the very-thick-kiwi-accented gentleman when and where we were to meet the shuttle (6:00 am in the town of Turangi, about 20 minutes from the B&B). He could take cash payment only, $40NZ each, so we would need to hit an ATM by morning. Raewyn had explained to us when we arrived that there had been a German couple staying in our room the past several days; they had come there specifically to do the crossing, but the weather had not been good enough till today, so they extended their stay (moving out of the guest room to the family room, since we were arriving, and rearranging their next stop), so they could do the hike (especially as the same thing had happened to them several years before, and they had missed out on the hike). I was beginning to understand that this "hike" was more akin to mountain climbing than what I had been picturing. The Germans returned around 5:00 or so, and I talked to them a little. They were quite sunburnt, but had had a wonderful time they said, and it was well worth it!

We chilled out for a bit, did some blogging and reading, and wrote out a grocery list for our hike. Then we headed into Turangi to the Four Fish Bistro for dinner. It was pretty good, though when we went to order dessert, the waitress said it was very limited because the chef had gotten sick and went home. The German couple were there also, so we chatted a bit more about the hike, and got some ideas about food and what to bring.

After dinner, we went to the New World supermarket and stocked up on lots of water and backpacking-type food for our daypacks: tuna, trail bars, apples, that sort of thing. Then after a good bit of driving around, we found an ATM and I got the cash we would need for the shuttle guy in the morning. We drove around in circles some more, but the nav system eventually got us back to the LakeHouse so we could turn in early and rest up for the day ahead.

This was the view of Lake Taupo that greeted us when we got out of our car at the Omori Lakehouse B&B. We just kind of said, Wow, and thought we would probably be able to handle this...!

We put our things in our rooms (Al and I had one room, and Alex the other of the two guestrooms), and then we were invited by our hostess Raewyn to tea out on the deck. Homemade shortbread cookies and hot tea in the New Zealand sunshine overlooking a volcanic lake. The only thing better than that is cold beers out on that same deck after a 12 mile mountain hike, but more on that later (!)

 

 

 

 

 

Here are a couple photos of our room:

Very comfortable and well appointed, including a fridge with beers, and a private deck outside a sliding glass door overlooking the lake.

There'll be more in later posts about our great experiences here [I'm writing this after the fact], but I'll say now that the food was also great, and our hosts were so, so wonderful and made us feel right at home.

We stayed here three nights. It was the most expensive stay, because we had to get two rooms, but it was so worth it!

If you ever get the chance to go to New Zealand, this is the place you should stay!

After our invigorating waterfall hike, we headed south on Route 27, then Rt 1, then 32, toward the final destination of our trip, Lake Taupo. When I researched for our trip, I thought this area looked like it had lots of opportunities for tramping in the types of landscapes we'd never been in before. Several people told us to be sure to pronounce it TOE-por, which we tried to remember to do, but then a lot of the local residents seemed to say TAW-poe; one person apologized and said they were just being lazy, though I couldn't see one way or the other took more effort... :-)

Here are a couple of photos taken along Rt 32:

We drove through miles of heavily forested land, mostly pine, very different from what we'd seen so far. I was surprised at the number of acres of clear-cut forest we saw, too. There's a fair amount of logging that takes place in Pennsylvania, but no longer any clear-cutting. There were lots of lumber mills and wood products businesses as well. We stopped for a nice (late) lunch of sandwiches and coffees at the Dam Cafe in Mangakino. (I don't think I've mentioned yet how much I love the cool Maori placenames here.) While we ate, I read a local newspaper and learned about a local lumber company whose employees were voluntarily reducing their hours so that everyone could keep their jobs, quite a success story for the local government. And we read some brochures about things to see and do around Lake Taupo.

Then we followed our nav system (for the most part) to our home for the next 3 days, Omori Lake House.

Wednesday morning after our big country breakfast, we drove the few km from the cottage to the Wairere Falls track (the waterfall we could see from our window). The weather was absolutely gorgeous, already t-shirt temperatures by 9:00. When I had first researched this area online, I'd been struck by the unusual topography you can see from this photo from Google, showing the lush Waikato valley to the west, and native bush to the east. Wairere Falls is the highest waterfall on the North Island, and drops 153m over the edge of the 300m escarpment formed by the Okauia Fault, whose line shows dramatically in the satellite photo.

 

 

 

 

 

The track started off through the bush from the carpark, and after about 10 minutes we came to the first bridge across the stream, but there was a sign that the bridges were being renovated in preparation for the summer season, so we would need to ford the stream and take the Maori Track if we wanted to get to the top of the falls. After a bit of discussion, we decided to go for it... we'd had a good breakfast and it was a beautiful day for a good hike before getting in the car for a few hours.

 

 

 

 

 

The track wasn't too bad at first, but soon became extremely steep... steep to the point of needing to grab onto roots and rocks to climb up the path (while hoping that none of the roots and branches were the New Zealand equivalent of poison ivy). The sign at the bottom of the track had said it was 90 minutes to the top of the falls, but what with essentially having to bushwhack, it was more like 2 hours. We were just thankful that it wasn't too muddy and slippery.

 

 

 

But finally we arrived hot and exhausted at the stream running across the plateau, very pleasant and calm...  you can see here that the stream is headed toward nothingness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here it drops off the edge of the world...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a nice wooden deck built at the edge of the cliff, so we spent some time there just looking out over the Waikato Plain, watching the shadows of the clouds move across the farmland. We met two fellow hikers at the top (Rachel and Joanna I think their names were), who were from the local area, and we enjoyed talking with them about the other tracks on the plateau.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We decided that we didn't feel like tumbling down the mountain on the Maori Track, and also that we wanted to see the view of the Falls themselves, which were only visible from the observation point along the actual track, so we turned right and went through the construction barricade (shhh!). We figured even if the bridges weren't crossable, we could probably just ford the stream again as we'd been instructed to do down below.

 

 

 

 

 

After about 1/2 hour, we were rewarded by this view from the observation point...

Here's a close-up of the top.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A little further on we came to the first of the bridges that were being reconstructed, and unfortunately it was then late morning so the workers were there. The bridge appeared to be pretty much ready for traffic, they were just putting some final touches on it, so we said what a nice job they were doing and what a lovely track it was, and may we please cross? The worker said "Well, it's a little late now" (meaning we'd come down the trail about 45 minutes already), and he let us pass. Further yet, we came to another bridge receiving some final work, and we tried the same tack, but this time the worker said it was OK with him, but we'd have to ask the "boss", who met Al in the middle of the bridge and blocked his way. After some discussion, he grudgingly let us pass, but really if we hadn't been allowed to cross, it would've been a fairly easy matter to cross the stream on the big rocks. We were trying hard not to be jerky American tourists, but we did feel that it was no different from taking our own route through the bush, which wasn't prohibited.

So the total hike was about 4 hours, and well worth it! We felt tired but yet energized, if you know what I mean.

We then drove back to the cottage, changed out of our sweaty clothes, packed up, and headed out after stopping to pay our hosts and thank them for the great stay.

Next stop, Lake Taupo!

Our lodgings in the Matamata area Tuesday night were a "farmstay" near Wairere Falls. Of all the places I had found online for our trip, I was the most unsure about this one, based on its little webpage and its price ($80 NZ + $20 for 1 extra person, so that was only about $55 US). So our expectations weren't very high when we drove up to the little house in the farmland; our hosts were cutting grass out front, and I thought the house was theirs and our cottage was somewhere in the back 40, but it turned out that the whole house was ours for the night; the hosts' home was next door. We were pleasantly surprised as our hostess took us for a little tour of the house... 3 bedrooms, a full bath, a spacious living room with a wood-burning stove, a farm-sized kitchen with a sunny dining area, front porch, carport, and this view out the back window:

 

 

 

 

We arranged with Steve & Heather for breakfast in the morning. It was $20 extra, and it was self-cook, but it was quite generous... around 7:00am or so, Steve brought around a basket full of farm-fresh eggs, tomatoes, yogurt, bacon, cereal, juice, milk, coffee, bread - a complete country breakfast!

 

 

 

 

 

We declined the offer to come out and help with the milking of his dairy herd (part of the farmstay deal), but we did enjoy watching the gentle cows come up to the fence surrounding our cottage. The flies, not so much, but we knew we were on a real farm, so it wasn't unexpected.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When we got back to the cottage Tuesday evening after dinner in Matamata, we were treated to a dramatic rainbow over Wairere Falls...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I couldn't resist taking this photo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's a little tour of the cottage - for once, I remembered to take the pictures before we threw our junk around :-)

 

Our Hobbiton tour bus took us back to Matamata just in time for an early dinner, so we walked across the street to the Redoubt Bar & Eatery, which had been recommended to us by the friendly woman at the information center. (I don't think we met a single person in NZ who was not upbeat and friendly.)

 

Dinner was really delicious; I had a chicken breast wrapped in prosciutto, and stuffed and surrounded with capsicum, feta, and spinach, and served with luscious new little potatoes. We tried some NZ beers: Monteith's and Red Lion, pretty tasty. The wait staff was the typical Australia/New Zealand tag-team, but here they were especially friendly and fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dessert was not only pretty, but also scrumptious! (I'll need to pull out my thesaurus to continue to describe the food experiences we had in New Zealand.) Mine was a creamy mousse covered with raspberry-soaked triangles of bread formed into a pyramid, with sweet cream and raspberry coulis surrounding it.

We drove into Matamata (the sign and statue at left are in the center of town), and went to the information center to buy our Hobbiton tour tickets. Alex had found a 10%-off coupon in a magazine I picked up at the airport, so that was helpful. While we waited for the time to gather for the bus, we took the opportunity to walk around Matamata a little bit and do a little gift shopping.

We met back at the information center and climbed onto the bus with the rest of the folks who'd bought tickets for that time... a group of Asian tourists, several sets of Germans, some other Americans, and a variety of others. The tour guide explained as we drove, that the Hobbiton set is on a 1200-acre working sheep farm owned by the Alexander family, who continued to work it during filming (just moving the 13,000 sheep around so they wouldn't be caught on film since they were the wrong type for Hobbiton).

 

 

Here is Eric, our very Kiwi guide for the walking tour. He was a little hard to understand at times (heavy accent), but a veritable fount of information about the movie filming. Here, he's showing us the roadway that Gandalf drove up in his cart as he first approached Bag End. He would sometimes stop his explanations to quiz us about arcane LOTR trivia, such as what did Frodo say to Gandalf on this spot? And the thing is, most of the people in the group always knew the answer - it was actually pretty hilarious!

We did learn a lot...

 

- this is the only Lord of the Rings movie set remaining in New Zealand. After filming, all the sets were required to be destroyed; they began to dismantle this one (presumably last), but then the rains came and the contractor said he'd be back in 6 months. But in the meantime, apparently so many people approached the landowners about seeing Hobbiton, that they were able to convince New Line Cinemas that they should be allowed to give tours, with the proviso that they could not do any reconstruction of the sets. That's why all the remaining holes are just the white substructure... all the pretty fake stones and gardens etc had already been removed.

 

- there have been at least 16 marriage proposals made under the Party Tree during tours.

- amazingly, no one in Matamata knew that the Hobbiton set was so nearby. They'd had casting calls for hobbits at the local school, and everyone knew LOTR was filming in NZ generally, but it wasn't until they saw and recognized the farm in the movie that most people knew. All during the filming, the actors were somehow billetted quietly in the area, and all the food etc was somehow brought in and the day's films sent to Wellington, under cover of secrecy. I don't quite buy that story, but Eric stuck to it.

 

- the Alexander farm was chosen to be Hobbiton during an aerial reconnaissance trip in which they spotted the perfect Party Tree beside a lake in the midst of cropped grassy rolling hills, and no signs of modern civilization within the range of vision. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

- in another example of trying to be as faithful as possible to descriptions in Tokein's book, for the oak tree atop Bag End, a tree was cut down elsewhere, all the branches cut off and numbered, then it was bolted back together and artificial leaves wired on. Someone asked why they didn't just use CGI for something that's only visible for such a short time - the answer was that the shadows of individual leaves rustling in the wind can't be duplicated. We saw some of the remains of that tree, but it had been dismantled.

 

 

 

 

- all the hobbit holes except for Bag End were only about a foot deep, so you never see anyone go beyond the doorway (I noticed that then later when we re-watched the movies, for example when Sam and Rosie enter their home at the end). We could all fit into Bag End, though, and Eric was kind enough to take anyone's photo who wanted it (see the top of my post - Alex said afterward, "Now we are truly geeks". Heh.).

 

 

 

 

 

After the tour, we were all shown a demonstration of sheep shearing, which was pretty interesting, and then we were allowed to feed some lambs. Kind of touristy, but, hey, I've never been on a real sheep farm, and we were in New Zealand, where the sheep still outnumber the people, so there you are.