Wellywood

A late start this morning firstly because we could hear the wind and rain outside and secondly as we have to be up early tomorrow to catch the ferry to Picton. Eventually we ventured outside and headed to the Museum of NZ.  AAgh, it was rather cold, about 5 deg and a strong wind. Later we researched on the Accuweather website a reading called "Real Feel" which was developed in the 1990's to more accurately determine what the temperature actually feels like and this stated today would feel like -2 deg which we can believe as it was literally bloody freezing. The museum was interesting and warm so that ticked the box for this morning.  It was actually a very good museum - very modern and full of interactive displays.  Of course, it had a great area about earthquakes and volcanoes as well as excellent Maori displays and sections about modern New Zealand.  They had a Gallipoli exhibition also but it had a huge queue as it is also New Zealand school holidays so unfortunately we had to give that a miss.

A quick bite to eat at lunch time and off to the Weta Workshop (Weta Cave) special effects company. We did the 45 minute guided tour and it was great as the guide was one of the special effects techs who had worked on the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies and was a wealth of information and anecdotes. There were a lot of props from different movies including a full scale (and working) Warthog M12 Light Reconnaissance Vehicle equipped with a manned gun on the back from the game Halo. This was made for a Halo movie that was cancelled but the crew love it as they take it out now and again, it does about 120kph and even goes sideways at about 80kph. If they take it out with the gun on the back they have to have a police escort as people start ringing the police. An absolutely awesome unit. Guess you can tell Larry wrote this part. Standing next to Lurtz the Orc from LOTR you can get a good impression of the size of them and it wasn't hard to understand how the actors get into the role fighting these guys. Another fact was "Tall Paul" who was the actor who played Sauron in the movies, as well as a scale model for when Aragorn had to shoot with the actors playing hobbits, is actually a very tall  NZ copper and they have his suit of armour on display.

Bought our small souvenirs, although very tempted to splash out on the more expensive hand crafted scale models of hobbit holes etc and posed for photos with the trolls, then back to the warm unit listening to the wooshing wind relaxing before going out again for dinner close by as we don't want to walk to far in this cold.

Dinner at the Genghis Khan Mongolian restaurant 100 m down the road as it is too cold to walk far. Great warming meal followed by yummy desert of fried banana with caramel and ice cream for Jenny and Larry and the girls had deep fried ice cream.

Next stop, the South Island.