Dear fantasy author who will remain nameless

It is great that your world-building acknowledges the importance of trade, providing a reason for people to brave hellish dangers in order to travel from $RURAL_TOWN to the land of the Totally Not Arabs Because This Is A Fantasy World people.

That said, when the five trade goods that matter in your fantasy world are clay, wool, metal, grain, and timber, I tend to go "Hmmmmmmm".

(Also, when travel is horrifically dangerous, people should probably be concentrating on shipping portable manufactured goods rather than raw materials.)

Middle-Earth goes 'squish'

So, we parted from our host at Lake Taupo and caught the bus down to Wellington. We spent the following day doing a LotR bus tour of the area. Lots of locations (Rivendell, Orthanc, Minas Tirith/Helm's Deep, Anduin, the road to Buckleberry Ferry), with lots of "if you look at this still from the movie, you can recognise THIS TREE!" moments.

Which isn't something I go crazy about, but the locations are pretty and the guide really knew her stuff. At one point she mentioned that she'd watched Viggo's nude scenes from Eastern Promises repeatedly in order to see where his Fellowship tattoo was and certainly not for any other reason. Sort of like a red-headed walking commentary track! The tour buses are named "Tiki", "Aragorn", and "Figwit", which latter might give some idea of the levels of concentrated geekiness involved.

There was also a photo-op, but I am not going to talk about that and if Rey has ANY DECENCY she will not post the results. If she does, I ask you all to remember that I was FORCED INTO THAT GET-UP.

We also visited Weta Workshops (apparently a script exists for a Dr. Grordbort movie!) and the Weta Cave (where we exchanged money for shinies), and our guide pointed out Peter Jackson's house as we drove past. Rey spotted him at the kitchen window, washing the dishes, and much squeeing ensued.

Sadly we'd only allowed one day in Wellington - definitely an oversight, will have to come back some time, it looks lovely. Next day we got on the ferry and sailed to Picton, where we checked out the aquarium (rehab penguin! Awwww!) and then drove on to Charleston. Today, we did a very good cave tour with glow-worms and our first live weta, and then drove on to Franz Joseph.

Rainy days so far: 11/11. V. damp.

BTW, is long hair on men less common in NZ? I'm getting "ma'am"-ed about twice a day, which is well above my usual average.