It has been - and felt like - FOREVER since I've blogged [Dear New Zealand, you are fabulous but please install free WiFi], and it feels appropriate to start this update with the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Did you know the movies were filmed in New Zealand? We stopped in Matamata, a small town with nearby farms that were transformed into The Shire, home of Frodo Baggins and his fellow hobbits.
As we drove around the country it was hard to not comment on the scenery in LOTR terms (i.e. "that's where Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli ran after the Orcs" or "see that mountain? Frodo and Sam climbed it on their quest to destroy the ring!"). Neither of us have read J.R.R. Tolkien's book, but we did watch movies 1 and 2 in the early days of our own NZ adventure, which both deepened our appreciation for the country's landscape and "Middle Earth".
How's my hobbit pose?
