While I visited many Lord of the Rings film locations during my multiple road trips all over the North Island, people kept telling me “the South Island is the real Middle Earth.” With its untouched, mountainous geography and less than ¼ of the New Zealand population living there, the South Island is the perfect setting for filming an epic like the Lord of the Rings. It’s no wonder I couldn’t help myself while road tripping around the region. Everywhere I looked I could envision orc battles, hobbits having second breakfast, and elves and men riding their horses across vast landscapes.
I sought out many of the South Island film locations with my equally nerdtastic travel companion, Carolina. Some were easier to find than others and some were less accessible than others. But in the end, we visited most of the locations completely independent from any paid tours—and we had great adventures of our own finding them!
The time has come to reveal what I have really been up to here in New Zealand. When people ask me, I have to admit to them I had never heard of New Zealand until I saw the opening shots of the Fellowship of the Ring (FOTR) and asked, with wonder, “Where is this place?!” Landing in the “middle of Middle Earth” (as Wellington airport and the Te Papa museum reminds its visitors) was 14 years in the making for me. I had dreamed of coming to this country since I was a teenager and finally, here I was.
I didn’t want all of my time here to be about the Lord of the Rings (LOTR), but I certainly was not going to pass up the chance to check out as many film locations as possible. Inevitably, I ended up nerding out all over the place. From hiding from a Black Rider in Mt. Victoria Park to walking barefoot through Hobbiton on the Alexander family farm, here are the locations I visited on the North Island.
At long last, I was at customs about to leave Bangkok headed for New Zealand. I was in a strange place in my head, sad to leave Thailand behind after only one month there, but excited to be headed to Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city.
My arrival to New Zealand happened to coincide with the premiere of the final Hobbit film. I chose Wellington as my destination city because it had been home to the film’s studio and workshop as well as the previous two film premieres. But just a few weeks before my scheduled flight, I learned the final premiere would be held in London instead. At first I was disappointed, but then I remembered why I had planned to visit New Zealand in the first place: to see the gorgeous countryside. So my plan was to get out of the city as soon as possible. Easier said than done.
It scares me. It scares me like nothing before in my life. Which makes it all the more important to set out and do it.
Recall Bilbo after the dwarves invited him on a journey to kill a dragon and then left him alone in his hobbit hole to ponder it all. He sighed to himself and surveyed his home thinking how nice it was they had finally departed. All was quiet and back to normal. Except now something was stirring inside of him. Bilbo had felt this stirring before—a spark that had been burning from within since he was a boy was suddenly set ablaze by the dwarves' proposal. It was growing, growing like a wildfire that sent him fleeing out his door, willingly leaving his mother's doilies and his valued 'kerchief behind.
