"cack baby" - going away present from flatmates

got a late start today with moving out of the apartment and packing everything into the car. we had to return some library books as well so we didn't actually leave wellington until 11am, about 3 hours off schedule.

though going up highway 1 is probably much quicker, we chose to go up using highway 2 for several reasons. first of all, we haven't been that way. might as well see as much of the country as possible. it allowed us to see lower hutt and upper hutt, suburbs of wellington. it allowed us to go to a paua factory where we bought more gifts--getting closer to being done with gift buying. we were also able to go to kaitoke regional park and palmerston north, which i will now elaborate on.

lord of the rings stuff: rivendell was shot in kaitoke regional park, as well as part of the river anduin. the park is a campground and picnic area. it was just another bush walk, nothing particularly spectacular about it. but somehow it was magically transformed to rivendell.

rivendell

swingbridge in the distance

rivendell/picnic area trees

we stopped in palmerston north for a very late lunch, 3 hours off schedule. i only wanted to pass through here for the same reason i wanted to pass through hamilton--because it's one of the bigger cities in new zealand and i haven't been there. palmerston north is a college, oops, university town (colleges here are high schools) and i don't think there's anything else to say about it other than the signs pointing to the highways are shit. the signs in new zealand in general are decent-shit but the signs in palmerston north are absolute shit.

palmerston north square

it rained. and rained. it rained the entire drive. the rain did not stop. did i mention that it rained? even we were on schedule, we wouldn't have been able to get a good view of tongariro national park so we'll have to get an early start tomorrow and head down there. we finally reached taupo at 7:40pm and my ass was numb. i just wanted to check in, take off my boots, and crash. now that i'm here, i'm going to bed. good night!