We’re staying just four days in Auckland mostly as a way to get acclimated to a very different time zone before heading to Christchurch to join the 13-day Sir Edmund Hillary Explorer tour on the south island.

We’ll be back for a longer stay at the beginning of February, so we’re leaving our “bigger” sightseeing goals for that stay.

Not having slept on the plane, when we arrived Ted was exhausted, so we focussed on simply settling in. While encouraging him to nap, I tried to quietly unpack only the few things we’d need over the coming days, and explore what our kitchenette had available for food preparation so that we could do a quick shop in the afternoon.

The big grocery chain here is called Woolworths, and is unrelated to the North American department store of the same name that now exists mostly just in Mexico. Unfortunately, our closest walkable Woolworths is a “metro market” in the CBD (Central Business District), where the selection is smaller and the prices higher than in their full-sized stores. That said, groceries in New Zealand are generally more expensive than in British Columbia.

We picked up enough “scrummy” (Kiwi slang for scrumptious) food for four light breakfasts, one lunch, and one dinner, plus 200g of ground coffee for the French press provided in our studio.

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There were no further plans for our day, but our accommodation is directly across the street from Victoria Park, which gave us a logical place to stroll. It’s a large green space used mostly as sports fields, especially cricket pitches, but today it was in the throes of being set up for January 10th’s Maoli “Island Vibe” concert, expected to see crowds in the tens of thousands. We’d never heard of the band Maoli, but apparently they are one of Polynesia’s biggest acts, blending country, reggae, soul, and R&B, and their concerts sell out within minutes of being announced.

The perimeter of the park features massive mature London plane trees.

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We continued past the park into the downtown, just as far as the SkyTower, before turning around to go back to recuperating from our jet lag.

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En route back to Quest we took the sun-dappled pathway near the Grafton United Cricket Club’s clubhouse, where a series of mosaic Māori totems as well as the coat of arms of a Māori meeting house are inlaid.

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Today, fully rested, it was time to get out and do something!

In addition to being famous as the location for the filming of much of the Lord of the Rings (we’ll be visiting Hobbiton in February!), New Zealand is also home to Wētā Workshops, arguably one of the most innovative special effects creators in the world.

There are two opportunities to experience Wētā: Wētā Workshop Unleashed here in Auckland, and the Wētā Workshop tour in Wellington. We decided to do both, since Auckland offers a highly visual, imaginative experience with photo ops and interactive effects, but Wellington features real props, original LOTR artifacts, and allows visitors to meet (but not photograph) artists working on current films. It’s described as more intimate and historically rich.

Today was our Auckland “excursion”. That word is a bit of an in-joke with our Viking cruise friends, since every off-ship event is an “excursion”. Ted has even taken to describing our daily walks and things like dentist visits with that word!

The hype around the 90 minute Auckland experience was not overstated. Our tour was fun, educational, and full of great photo opportunities, beginning in the entry hall before the tour even began.

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Our tour group of about 20 were taken into a “Store Room” and left to count boxes until our guide, Jessie, was ready for us. The boxes certainly had “interesting” contents.

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The first thing Jessie noticed was that once in the store room there seemed to be no way out! After unsuccessfully trying to exit through the boxed yeti, one of our younger group members was able to help us “escape” through a doorway cleverly disguised as a huge carton containing Topsy Turvy Teddies (“tumbling terror toys for tiny tots”!).

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We entered a “reception” area decorated with original models of some of Wētā’s most iconic characters. These small models would have taken weeks to create, and were then used as the basis of life-sized (and larger) creations.

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Jeff, an animatronic security guard (and clumsy health & safety officer), lackadaisically welcomed us.

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The tour experience is curated into individual workshop areas for each of three fictional movies; fictional in that they are concepts/premises that will never actually be produced.

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The first movie was called FAUNA, a horror movie with a premise that involved mutated animal life.

One plot line in the movie involved a veterinarian autopsying a mutant that proves not actually to be dead – and exacts its revenge! Ted practised a bit of dissection, with no ill effects beyond an otherworldly glow.

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One of the areas in this workshop showed how rubber “life masks” are made. The process involves an actor sitting for up to an hour, immobile and with eyes closed, while layers of latex cure over their features. It was somewhat fascinating to see moustaches and beards perfectly rendered in rubber.

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Another interactive area involved allowing one’s face to be screen-captured in order to “map” it, and then have your facial movements transmitted to an animatronic skull.

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There were also interactive “make-up” tables, where disembodied hands on a screen magically transformed visitors into macabre creatures.

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Naturally, there was also an opportunity to be devoured, in this case by a monster that was also a scream-echo device. Appropriate.

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We transitted between the first two movie areas via a “creativity” room, where we got a glimpse into the inspirations of Wētā creators through a display of their sketches.

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Particularly amusing (to me, anyway) were the drawings of Lord of the Rings characters as guinea pigs.

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This giant’s eyebrows and hand hairs were made of fishing line. Each brow took three hours to create!

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Those of us not too squeamish (Jessie specified “claustrophobic, small children, or vegetarians”) then walked through a dark creepy “abbatoir”; no actual gore, but lots of walking through hanging things that might have been carcasses or… bladders?

The second concept movie was AGE OF THE EVERCLAN. What if the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs never hit earth, and the dinosaurs evolved into the dominant species, ending up bipedal, intelligent, creative – and in constant power struggle (just like humans!)? Two distinct clans emerge: the Ever-clan (vegetarian, agrarian, cooperative, democratic) and the Death-clan (carnivorous and warlike, with a gang type power structure).

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From concept board to scale model, the Ever-clan citadel was big enough to allow is to enter the tunnels underneath, which were complete with glow-worms!

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The clans need guards and warriors; Wētā excels in creating prosthetics and innovative costumes.

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These incredibly detailed heads are all sculpted from tin foil! Jessie gave interested group members a lesson in creating a foil rose.

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Any good society, human or dinosaur, needs a publican – someone to stoke the fire and lend a sympathetic ear…

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… and any citadel worth the name needs a throne. Obviously, this particular throne was calling out for an empress…

… maybe an emperor too. Given the size of that axe, I’ll think about it.

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The third movie was ORIGINS, a science fiction concept featuring a huge insect-like alien who lands on earth disguised in a humanoid robotic exoskeleton in order not to frighten the humans with whom she interacts.

Once again, we got a glimpse into the creative process.

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At 3 metres tall,  this robot is the tallest animatronic that Wētā has ever created. Using perspective photography in a movie we were told it could appear to be up to 90 metres tall!

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This was the most challenging area in which to get photos, because of the low lighting used to create the sci-fi mood.

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During the tour we learned that Wētā Workshop was founded by Sir Richard Taylor and his wife Tania Rodger in 1987 in Wellington, New Zealand, starting from their flat as Richard Taylor Effects and  later evolving into the renowned creative company known for its work on major films like The Lord of the Rings. They officially became Wētā Workshop in 1993. Our guide told us that when the couple began working together making models in their own apartment, they often resorted to sculpting creatures from butter (with which they were sometimes paid for their part-time jobs at a bakery). Whether or not that is true, it seems that the Wētā founders allow the story to be told.

The animated short shown at the end of the tour shows a frenetic “typical work day”, with creators being chased around by their creations, and Richard and Tania as ending via helium balloons out of the chaos.

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We’re excited to see and learn more from actual Wētā creators in Wellington at the end of the month.

And, what exactly is a wētā, the company’s namesake? It is a giant flightless cricket endemic to New Zealand, and is one of the heaviest insects in the world. Coincidentally, it is what the alien in “Origins” was supposed to look like under its robot armour.

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We ended a really lovely day with dinner at I Village (click the link to see their innovative menu), a beautiful Indian restaurant in Victoria Park Village.

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The decor inside and out is stunning, the clay brick stables of Victoria Park Village all having been repurposed as offices, shops, and restaurants.

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The service was perfection, the ambience wonderful, the food beautifully presented and delicious. It was a bit pricier than the average Indian restaurant, but our meal was accompanied by an explanation of how spices were all sourced regionally in India, imported then and hand blended in house to allow dishes to be created at varying heat levels, and that nothing is cooked in big batches. Care showed in every dish.

Our appetizer set the tone of the meal that followed.

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It was a truly lovely start to our 5 month travels… and tomorrow is another day full of promise!