Travel to South Island

Posted on March 7, 2015 by Mary Beth Frezon

Limited access tonight folks. I uploaded photos from my phone to Flickr but the rest will have to wait.

We had a great time today, taking the ferry to picton and then driving along down in the direction of Christchurch, meandering south through vineyards and sheep and cows. Rainy for parts but you know I’m all about the clouds. Fascinating to see all the rows of grapes covered for protection against birds. . 

Oh the mountains! And the Pacific! And I found out what a shingle fan is (a delta or run out area full of these round stones. 

????

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Some Things I’ve seen in New Zealand, so far

Posted on March 6, 2015 by Mary Beth Frezon

Sheep.
Cows.
Cattle.
A goat.
Four chickens.
Three Pukeko.
A few black swans.
Canadian Geese.
Black-back sea gulls.
Shag.
Myna.
More sheep.
More Cows.
A lot of ocean!
Nice walkways leading to beach with lovely park benches at strategic resting points.

The House which overlooked this bench and the view from this bench.
Public Loos – or toilets everywhere including a “Super Loo“.
Many Roundabouts (rather than “yield” one is asked to “give way”.
A movie theater with rows of couch-like seating for pairs and a beer and wine list as well as a proper cuppa or whatever else you might like. (We saw “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” and we gave it a thumbs up.)

Concrete telephone/wire poles

And some beer that looked back at me…

We’ve also seen some beautiful quilts and some beautiful modern Tapa

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PS

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Mary Beth Frezon

I had been pretty proud of myself, answering questions at Hobbiton correctly. At today’s meeting of fans, there were a big handful of guys who could answer a LOT of questions about LOT of non-Lord-of-the-Rings movies correctly. Where was this gun used? Where did this exoskeleton appear? It was damn impressive.

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Warez MB?

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Mary Beth Frezon

We started out this morning and we did a lot of cool stuff. First up, drive into Wellington and we went to Minerva, a textile bookshop. There were some fabulous quilts on display there and a huge assortment of books – embroidery, couture, quilting.

We had made reservations to go to Weta Workshops so we then wandered up and wandered around Weta Cave looking at all the nice things available for purchase. Got checked in and waited outside for the tour guide Gavin to come and round us up. Our tour group had people from England, France, Australia, some body from upstate New York in the States… and New Zealand of course.

As you can see, the waiting area outside was a little problematic. There were rheumy-eyed trolls with a fair amount of troll snot going on. The tour was excellent. Explained the process of making molds to make things like guns and swords, let us handle some of the samples as well as steel chain mail vs their aluminum version vs a knitted version. Seeing some of the armor and weapons up close was amazing.

Then we went off to have lunch and had a fabulous lunch, had a lovely walk down to the nearby bay (where we saw a bench dedicated to Peter Jackson’s parents) and came back for dinner. Whew. I’m about to do a face plant. Check out the flickr site for all the rest of the images!

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Mordor, and Deserts, Mountains, the Anduin, and the Sea. Oh my!

Posted on March 4, 2015 by Mary Beth Frezon

We left our wonderful farmstay accomodations this morning, tucking away some fine muffins, wonderful cheddar and blueberries.

Off we went traveling and before you know it, we’d gotten to Lake Taupo which was hiding its blueness under a haze along with hiding the peaks behind it. Had a lovely lunch overlooking the water. Had my moment of asking for something and finding out my word didn’t quite register off the bat. I asked apologetically for “silverware” and after a moment of puzzled look, “ah, you want cutlery?” Yes please. What a hoot.

Then it was off around the edges of the lake and winding our way towards…

MORDOR

Although we did not spot any orcs at all — good job everyone! — we did spot some fantastic alpine flora and a whole lot of impressive rocks and eventually, further up the road a ski area with a bunch of trekkers. Later we followed a

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