Fun Facts I Learned Here

• Wellington is predator free! The only thing that can harm you is other humans, no animals.

• ​One of favorite things I experienced, besides the Lord of the Rings tours (obviously) was the tooting tunnel.  People had started beeping in the tunnel in memoriam of a teenager who died during construction of the tunnel.  Our tour guide told us that at one point they wanted to ban beeping so people started doing it even more.

• Manuka honey was used in World War II for healing wounds and it still kept in hospitals today 

• Since its Wellywood, let's talk some Lord of the Rings facts that I loved:

  • The NZ military was used for the orc armies and they were so heavy with artificial face parts that they couldn’t really see and so they would start attacking other orcs. They were so good at fighting that Peter Jackson had to tell them at one point, you know you’re supposed to lose right?

  • For the falls running down the hill in the first Lord of the Rings, Jackson hired local Jiu Jitsu members to be stunt doubles for the Hobbits.  The part where Pippin says "I think I've broken something" was real.  One of the jiu jitsu students broke his collar bone in the rolling and said that exact thing so they re-purposed it for the movie

  • A company wanted to build residential properties on the beautiful Miramar peninsula so Peter Jackson and his wife bought the land so that it could remain a park.

  • When making Rivendell, Peter Jackson and his team removed every single plant and tagged them, stored them in a greenhouse and re-planted each one after filming

  • Liv Tyler was so afraid of horses that they had to film her scenes riding the horse on a life size rocking horse!