Off to the capital

The bus takes us north to Picton from where we take the ferry back across to the north island and Wellington, only staying here one night on the way down meant that we had pretty much missed the place so with the people we met on the bus we decided to stay around 2-3 nights. When checking in to base hostel we here it's ladies night so free drinks for the girls or any guy willing to dress up, after dinner Beardy Joe soon comes back to the room in a lovely looking dress and wig. Later I go down to check out the bar only to also be given a suitcase full of girls clothes and told to dress up, on the promise of free drinks I was game.

With only about 20 people in the bar the “girls” behind the bar were happy to continue filling our glasses and then I found out there was a competition for the best dressed, by the time they were going to choose the other guys had continues their drinking crawl off to another bar leaving only Beardy Joe and I in drag, to make it a little fairer it ended up as a space hopper style race on foam snails with the price of a bag full of goodies and a bottle of super luxury champagne. I won the race around the bar so now have a great new bag for the laptop along with all the other drinks related memorabilia and we split the bottle, all in all a good night seeing as it was completely free.

Up early the next day and we go to Te Papa the national museum, it's good with everything from Maori culture to the geology of the country, a yummy bagel afterwards and a quick rest in the hostel before we all make our accent up Mt Victoria about a 50 minute walk to the top from the hostel with some great views of the city as we go, the 360 degree viewing platform at the top tells you a lot of information on the city and also meant we finally new where things were.

Our last day full day in the capital and time to be a little more nerdy, a small walk around the city and such in the morning before we go on a half day Lord of the rings tour around Wellington, we're taken to loads of sites where scene were shot and shown how some of them were done. The guy who runs this tour is really enthusiastic and brings props for every stop so you can pose as characters, one of the best things he does is has 3 people to stand together with a few rags around them up the top of a hill to look really like a black rider on a horse.

He takes us to Weta caves where they make props and do the editing and computer animation for a lot of big films including all of Peter Jackson's movies.

Here they have loads of costumes, props, swords and other parts from the movies all over the walls and in cases, it was a great way to find out about how they went about making a lot of the scenes, it looks like a great place to work although they say they receive around 1400 CV's a week.