Leaving the northlands

When we last wrote, we were full of the delights of Tongariro National Park. We then headed south, to pick up the ferry to other half of NZ. After all, we’d spent almost a month in North Island, and all the places we really wanted to see were in the south.

We drove from Tongariro to Whanganui River, acclaimed as an absolutely beautiful waterway, ideal for canoeing and all sorts. However to us it was pretty reminiscent of the Thames, and we really didn’t see what all the fuss was about. Nice ducks, though.

Pushing on to Wellington, we thought we’d spend a few days in the capital city. Unfortunately, we were underwhelmed by Wellington! This capital city has only 300,000 odd people, and the books say it ‘takes part in sibling rivalry with larger Auckland’. We concluded quite quickly that it loses. Big time. There is nothing wrong with Wellington, but what on earth is the big deal? WHY is it the capital, apart from its central location? We did the ‘must do’ tourist attraction of the cable car, for example. This was a 3 minute journey up the hill. Whoop de do. We went to the foodie area where ‘all the action for eating and drinking is’. OK, but only if the action you like involves McDonalds, Burger King or Subway. We visited the fascinating parliament building called the Beehive – it’s a 1970s unedifying edifice. Maybe we picked the wrong weekend, but it was dead as a doornail. We took a pleasant (but nothing special) stroll through the Botanic Gardens. The sea is, well, the sea is ‘there’. Wellington is also called the windy city, and it aint no joke. There were times when we drove north of the capital that I was getting fearful of the van turning over! At night the van rocked none too gently – nothing to do with us mate, it was wind of the external variety. We camped in Lower Hutt, just outside the city, and had an interesting location in a dusty carpark within an industrial estate. Of course the kids loved it because there was a park, but we were left unimpressed.

However. Wellington is now dubbed Wellywood, not least because it’s Peter Jackson’s home town (oh no, I hear you cry, she’s talking Lord of the Rings again!). Around it are a shed load of LOTR locations, including Rivendell, the Rohan and Anduin rivers and the gardens of Isengard. You would think with LOTR trebling the tourist revenue per annum after its release that they might make a thing out of this. But no. We spent a frustrating and at points hilarious day In Search of Rivendell.

Signposts? Nah. Information locally? Nah. There is a dreadfully written best-seller called the Lord of the Rings Location Guidebook that gives GPS coordinates and florid descriptions of some of the sites, and other tourist attractions nothing to do with LOTR (perhaps he got paid for mentioning them?!) but nothing so useful as a map or directions that make any sense at all. Rivendell for example lies on the Hutt river (see now why we chose Lower Hutt?) in Kaitoke regional park. The book says ‘the position of Rivendell is signposted from the entrance’. Ah, wise writer, but WHICH entrance? It completely fails to mention that there are at least three, about 20 kilometres apart. We know. We visited all three. Two were deserted, and after dragging the kids out of the van and shutting it all down, we hauled them back in and powered everything back up within a minute of arriving. I was getting somewhat peevish, hauling over 6 metres of high sided 3.5 tonne campervan down speed humpy crappy roads against a deadly side wind. Oh but I should have enjoyed the solitude, because it quickly became clear that stop number three was the right one. Yes indeed, with about 200 cars squeezed into a miniscule car park down a single track road, with large Kiwi ladies wandering aimlessly through the road, while I try and manoeuvre said beastie through it all. I was a bit grumpy.

We were all full of hoorahs and woo hoos when we found the sign for Rivendell. Tolkien described it as a valley that is well hidden from the eyes of men, and he wasn’t wrong as far as we had been concerned. Alas a multitude of the population had found it (maybe THEIR cars have GPS!) and were picnicking and sploshing in the sacred river, how dare they! The guidebook promised interpretive displays. Alas no. Even in my moody I would acknowledge Kaitoke as a nice little park. Very pleasant. Bit like Richmond Park. But Rivendell? Well, after walking around following the signposted in, oooh, a vast 20 metre loop, it appears it was a patch of grass and a couple of trees by the river. Obviously we didn’t expect to see sets or to go ‘oh wow look it’s instantly recogniseable!’ (though that would have been nice …) but too see some of the sublime beauty that meant Jackson had absolutely no choice but to film there. Couldn’t have been that it was handily in his back yard then?
The kids were underwhelmed, but insisted on a picnic. We did enjoy sitting on said patch of grass, tucking in to impromptu sarnies and watching the clouds racing by at impossible speeds, with light rain falling out of clear blue skies.

We shortly set out to find Isengard. The book pompously jokes ‘to travel from Rivendell to Isengard was an arduous journey of many weeks with countless leagues of wild rough country to negotiate but in Upper Hutt it can be completed in less than 15 minutes.’ Obviously the man is allergic to commas (whereas I’m addicted to them). However, Harcourt Park, allegedly a right turning off the main highway, is neither signposted from the road at any point nor any more useful directions from the guide. We never found it! Admittedly, we didn’t go veering off anywhere too far. Our get up and go had got up and gone. On the way home, on dual carriageway where I was doing the speed limit in the slow lane in high winds, traffic flowing freely past me, some pleasant gentleman with a very red face with veins popping everywhere shook his fist and shouted at me ‘let people pass!’ Errrppp?? OK, so we had had enough by now. We giggled ourselves stupid all evening and drank lots of wine, bewailing some of the shortcomings of North Island.

We were distinctly unimpressed with the south of the north, sorry New Zealanders. But the north of the south, ah well that is another story …