Category Archives: Travel

Intermission: we take to the trees

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Tuesday 17 February 2026 – Warning! Photographic Nerdery Alert!

The activity that Jane found for us this evening was prompted by a conversation she had with Peter, in whose company we spent the day with Kiwi Dundee, back in the Coromandel Peninsula. He’d mentioned that Sue and he had walked a trail through Redwood trees near Rotorua, the trail being walkways actually up in the trees. Jane discovered that these walkways are open during the evening as well as in the daytime, with the process of teetering in the dark across narrow, bouncy rope suspension bridges leavened by lanterns hung among the trees. I had also heard passing comments by some American tourists in our hotel about doing the Redwood walk, so I knew it was A Thing. It’s also a Popular Thing, so we went late in the hope that the queue might have died down a bit.

There was space in the car park, which was a good omen as we approached the trail.

However, there was a substantial queue,

which an operative opined was about 45 minutes’ worth. I nearly bailed out until I saw the expression on Jane’s face. We joined the back of the queue, which moved slowly forward as people were released into the treewalk. It wasn’t too bad, actually – I suppose we queued for about half an hour – but immediately in front of us was an extremely annoying American student, who clearly came from a wealthy background and spent pretty much the whole time in the queue talking to his companion in a gratingly loud voice about his two million dollar trust fund and what he might do with it when he got his hands on it.

But eventually, at about 2215, we reached the front of the queue and were released into the treewalk. One walks up a spiral ramp to get to the start.  The trail consists, as I’ve said, of narrow and bouncy suspension bridges between platforms; the platforms encircle the trunk of the various trees. The rules said no photography on the bridges and there were theoretically limits on the number of people allowed at any one time on bridges or platforms, but it was never an issue for us – it was not at all crowded once we got started.

The lanterns hung among the trees were pretty spectacular.

The entire lighting was designed by David Trubridge, who specialises in designing pendant lamps, and it’s touted as New Zealand’s “first design-led tourist venture”. There are 85 lanterns in total, with designs inspired by New Zealand’s flora and fauna, including the owl, cicada wings, falcon, and Kowhai flowers. Some more numbers: the walk is 700m long, with 28 suspension bridges and 27 platforms.

The challenge posed by this lighting is capturing it photographically.  I took my Nikon with me on the basis that the bigger sensor would give me the best chance of capturing decent images; and both Jane and I also used our Samsung phones which have a “night shot” facility to help capture images in dark situations.

See? I warned you that there would be some photographic nerdery.

The comparison between what you get with the Nikon and with the phone is quite striking.

Samsung

Nikon – with HDR processing

The night mode of the phone takes multiple images at different exposures and overlays them to fill out dark areas.  On the surface, it looks like the phone has done a good job, but examining the details reveals that the noise processing algorithm as part of night photography has smeared quite a lot of the detail in the darker areas. The Nikon produces a much darker photo, because I dialled in a 2-stop darkening exposure compensation when I took the photo. In the above example, I have tweaked the photo to bring out the darker areas, but it’s still left things quite dark in the margins.  To match what the phone has done, I had to push the exposure back up by those two stops

and apply the world-class noise reduction that DxO Photolab offers. The result looks similar to what the phone produced all on its own, but the details show that the Nikon image is technically cleaner.

I actually took the same photo again on the Nikon, this time without the -2 stop  exposure correction

and this has actually come out really well.  What does this demonstrate?

  1. The phone does a pretty good job if you’re going to showcase your results on the web
  2. For most of the photos I took on the Nikon, I was too aggressive with my exposure compensation; I didn’t do a god job of judging the exposure
  3. But at least with the Nikon I had the option of control. With the phone’s night mode, it makes all the decisions and you’re stuck with those in whatever the results are.

Here’s another comparison, in a section where a laser was playing multiple beams across the trees below the walkway.

Samsung

Nikon

You can see that the multiple images used in the Samsung shot has resulted, unsurprisingly, in a much brighter image with more laser reflections. The Nikon image again is technically much superior, with deeper blacks and much less noise. But which is “better” really resides in the eye of the beholder: which do you prefer?

It was in this area that Jane took a picture to show the bridges that are slung between the platforms.

A fundamental point demonstrated by the exercise of taking photos in these tricky situations is one of individual preference. I took several images of an owl illumination (all with the Nikon), and this is the version I settled on.

I did this by using High Dynamic Range (HDR) processing, taking advantage of a RAW image – I compressed the dark and light parts to bring out the dark areas a bit.  On the other hand, I could have simply pushed the exposure up by two stops, and got this.

Neither is “better” than the other – they’re just different ways of processing a tricky subject. I also took a version without stopping down the exposure so much, and this is what I got.

Now, I think that’s over-exposed. But someone else might not.

We saw again the difference between phone and Nikon later on.

Samsung

Nikon

actually not exactly the same scene, but once again it shows the propensity of the phone to provide a brighter image.

The walkway splits into two about half way round; one can opt to carry on at the same level, which is 9m above the forest floor; or to go up to a higher walkway, about 20m above the ground.

On the higher route, the bridges are outlined in light.

Samsung

Nikon, HDR processed

Nikon, exposure pushed +2 stops

I think what matched best what one saw is shown in the last image; the Samsung photo is dramatic but overdone.

OK, enough with the nerdery.  Here are some more images from the rest of the walkway.

Samsung

Samsung

Samsung

Nikon

Nikon

Samsung

Nikon

Samsung – Jane being artistic

Samsung – me not being artistic

Nikon

We eventually reached the end of the track, with a spiral down that runs outside the spiral up to the start.

As you exit, you pass a section of Redwood trunk cut in 1952. It is, of course, set up as a selfie- or group photo backing

Someone with much better eyesight than me has counted the rings in from the outside to determine that this tree was over 2,000 years old. And then put labels on to show what was going on in the world as the tree grew.

Thought-provoking, eh?

It was fun walking the trail, and, with thanks to Jane, I’m glad I overruled my usual impatience with queuing to walk the trail at night. That was our last activity in Rotorua. Tomorrow, we move on a short way down the road to Taupo. There are a couple of possibly interesting things to see en route and a cruise on Lake Taupo once we’re there. I shall report back and hope you return to read all about it.

 

Mud, mud, gurgling mud

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Monday 16 February 2026 – Having checked in yesterday and indulged in a cup of Twining’s Finest Earl Grey, we found ourselves with a little time on our hands. So we went for a walk. Obviously.

We had a bit of a side trip as part of my tiresome tireless search for an electric toothbrush, because the cheapo Colgate battery-driven number I’d bought in Auckland turned out to be pretty rubbish.  Our walk to Woolworth’s took us past quite a fine mural.

Shame about the graffiti on it, though.  However I know that you will share my (and Jane’s) delight that my search for a toothbrush proved moderately successful!

Our hotel is pretty much beside the lake, so it was a short walk to take an overview. Its geothermal pedigree is on clear display (and, of course, you can smell it, too – there’s a distinct “rotten eggs” niff of Hydrogen Sulphide in the air.

Jane had discovered that there is a walkway beside the lake out to a place called Sulphur Point, so we took it

whilst being sure to be careful because of the not-inconsiderable danger of death that seems to lurk round every corner.

As we walked along, we noted a vast flock of gulls by the lakeside.

I had assumed that the waters of the lake would be too toxic to support aquatic life, but apparently there are fish in the lake for the gulls to eat alongside insect and plants.

The walkway led past some black swans

who were doing the duck dive thing, which I’ve not seen before.  At Sulphur Point there are a couple of pieces of art

“Waters of Rotorua”, by Rory McDougall. No, me neither

lots of gulls, some greylag geese and swamp hens.

There’s also been a strong effort to make the loo look pretty.

It was getting late by this stage,

and the light on the lake was lovely.

We hastened back to the hotel, walking through Government Garden and passing the museum, sadly largely covered in scaffolding and sheeting, but the exposed areas of which look very attractive.

Government Garden is a handsome place

and houses, among other things, a Māori Teahouse.

That was yesterday. Today was set to be Geothermal Day. Our itinerary took us to Orakei Korako, a geothermal park. When I visited New Zealand back in 1988, I based myself in Auckland and explored by simply driving as far as I could on day trips, one of which was to Rotorua, which is when I experienced its heady aroma for the first time. In those days I was neither culturally aware nor in possession of a guide book; all I wanted to see was some boiling mud. If memory serves, I did, although I can’t place exactly where I found it. But I must have seen some, otherwise the angst of having gone all that way and not found any to look at would have stayed with me for those intervening 38 years. So, I had high expectations of a boiling mud persuasion for today.

Orakei Korako is about an hour’s drive from Rotorua, through some typically quirky North Island scenery

and past significant evidence of vast amounts of logging.

It’s astonishing the amount of planting that has gone on of Monterey Pine trees, which are grown for the making of paper, since Eucalyptus doesn’t flourish here. There are impossibly steep slopes covered in these pine trees; I couldn’t imagine how they were even planted, let alone how the logging was done. But, clearly, it is done, and is a significant industry in the area.

Geothermal activity is a brutal thing, involving huge temperatures and pressures (and, I was hoping, boiling mud, of course). Orakei Korako has managed to put an entirely charming and low-key package together to showcase it.  One parks lakeside, and is given a friendly but serious safety briefing (basically not to stray from the  boardwalks, as this can be fatal) when collecting tickets, and is then transported across to the actual brutal bit on a cute little ferry.

The walk round the park takes 60 – 90 minutes, and is very well laid out, with maps and info boards to show you where you are and what you’re seeing.  It was pleasantly quiet, with just a few people wandering about in the park. The boardwalks are easy to navigate,

though there is quite a bit of up-and-down as you pass and view the various sites.

It is a typically “blasted landscape”

with considerable evidence of sulphur, and steam rising in many places, often above boiling pools.

Some areas have names; this, for example, is called the “Artist’s Palette”.

It wasn’t particularly colourful today, but apparently under some circumstances it can be overrun by boiling water, which is an ideal growth platform for algae of a wide variety of colours.

I was feeling that there was a bit too much emphasis on pools of boiling water, when we came across this sign.

So, after a quick look at the cave

we hastened down so I could get my fill of boiling mud, mud, gurgling mud!

If you want to see the mud in action, I included it in this overview video of the place wot I produced,

which also gives a better idea of the scale of the place than any of the photos we took. It’s very nicely laid out and pleasantly uncrowded; we enjoyed our visit immensely.

We had to get back to the hotel in time to be collected and taken to our evening’s activity, a Māori “cultural experience”, a description apt to send a shudder up the spine. Ours was to be hosted at Te Puia, which John at Kiwi Dundee had described as “legit”, so I wasn’t absolutely dreading it.

A bus came to pick us up at around 5.15 for the short journey to the place.

We filed in through the arch and joined a whole heap of people who were there for the evening’s entertainment to witness a Māori welcome ceremony. In real life, of course, it has the possibility of going sadly wrong unless you know what you’re doing, but we had a host marshalling us around; he picked a sucker volunteer from the crowd to be the “visiting chief” and made sure that he didn’t get stuck by an angry challenger.

His job was to approach the pavilion which houses the “natives”.

 

…who come out to look you over…
…and send a couple of chaps down to challenge.
A fearsome display, then…
…placing a token to assess your intent
It’s important to pick this up calmly…
…and retreat. This is the point at which it could go wrong.

Some final display then leads to the visitors being accepted and led into the pavilion. I have video, but you get the idea.

Inside, we are treated, as you might expect, to an exposition of native culture – a welcome speech from the “chief”, singing, dancing, explanation of the cultural and practical significance of dance accessories and weapons, and, of course, the haka, which is probably the single most famous Māori cultural export of New Zealand. If you’re a rugby fan. Again, I have video, so, erm, here is some of it.

It was by and large a jolly pleasing noise, but one thing struck me as unexpected. Not that I wish to accuse anyone of cultural appropriation, but there were a lot of familiar western harmonies in the songs they sang….

Following this was a part of the evening which I least expected and most enjoyed – a visit to the centre’s resident geyser*, Pōhutu. It was preceded by a session around a firepit where Māori cuisine was discussed as a prelude to the “Māori feast” we would have later, and then we all trooped down into the Te Whakarewarewa geothermal area in the centre to hope that Pōhutu would do its stuff before we had to troop back and eat.

It took a while – some twenty minutes of gradual buildup – but it was pretty spectacular when it finally came to the party.

The meal was set out as a buffet, and quite a massive one at that. Jane and I had been allocated Table 12, and were both pretty glad to find that it was a table for two. We partook reasonably lightly of the buffet, unlike the couple next to us, who came from (I think) Finland and could reasonably be described as comfortably upholstered.  She had a dessert between two visits to the main course buffet stations, and he had just started on his third main course plateful – the third being after a dessert – as we left. A short bus ride took us back to the hotel, and that was it for the day, and a very enjoyable one it was, too, loaded as it was with many things geothermal of which we don’t see much in the UK.

I said that the Haka was New Zealand’s most famous cultural export, but there is, of course, an even more iconic, erm, icon of the country. This is what we shall learn about tomorrow. See you then?

 

 

*  Pronounced “guyzer”,by the way. A “geezer” is who was taking photos of it.

On To Hobbiton

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Sunday 15 February 2026 – Our eventual destination for the day was Rotorua, well-known for being smelly and overrun by seas of boiling mud. On my previous trip to New Zealand, way back in 1988, the boiling mud thing was just about all I knew about Rotorua (and, let’s face it, the whole of the North Island, being, as I was, vastly ignorant about almost everything back then), so I found some boiling mud and judged the expedition a success before heading back to Auckland. This time we’d be staying in Rotorua for a couple of days so were fairly sure that another dose of boiling mud would be easy to find. En route, though, we had an appointment with a place which I had more than a nagging suspicion was going to be naff but which Jane absolutely insisted be on our schedule – the Hobbiton Movie Set, near Matamata. Jane is well versed in all things Hobbit-y and Middle Earth-y, having read and, as far as I can tell, memorised JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.

We had a booked entry time of 10.40, and John (of Kiwi Dundee) had warned us that we’d better make sure we were on time, as he said the place is pretty fully booked most of the time. Given that we had a three-hour journey, that dictated a brisk start to the day, so an 0600 alarm reminded us that we were travelling, not having a holiday, OK? The journey was uneventful, leading us past some more great scenery on the bottom end of the Coromandel Peninsula

before entering the large plain that lies to the south of the peninsula, which is really very flat indeed.

Being flat, it lends itself to dairy farming, and we saw huge numbers of cattle grazing on fields beside the road as we went. The Hobbiton Movie Set is clearly a Big Deal, as signposts to it start some way out. As one gets closer, the wording on the signs is, I think, a bit enigmatic.

Do they farm tourists on the movie set? Breed them and then set them free to roam the world on vast great cruise liners so that snobs can tut about tourism ruining all the nice places?

We arrived in good time, and were actually offered an entry time ten minutes earlier than our booking, which we accepted. I’m glad we did because it meant we ended up with a guide around the site who did an excellent job.

The Hobbiton Movie Set is not like the Harry Potter site near Watford in the UK. There, one can wander at will; on the Hobbiton set, one is shepherded from place to place as a group, with a guide giving talks at various places around the set; one is strongly discouraged from independent wandering. This goes against the grain for me, but actually, since groups arrive with guides every ten minutes, there really is value in going round with the group. as the information dispensed is very interesting.

The group is shepherded on to a bus to take people from the entry and car parks to the set.

There is a welcome video shown on the bus to give some context to what’s going on, and it’s at this point that one begins to get an insight into the scale of the operation. A bit of history:

The set was originally built in the 1990s for the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. It is located within a large farm, owned by one Ian Alexander, and was found by a location searcher on a flight over it; it has many of the right characteristics – undulating hills, a lake and so forth – for creating Hobbiton in The Shire for the relatively small amount of time that it would figure in the original trilogy. It was built according to typical movie set rules, i.e. largely faked. The filming was done in about three months and the set broken down and returned to farmland. The story gets more interesting when Peter Jackson, the producer of the Rings films, decided to make a trilogy of films based on Tolkien’s prequel, The Hobbit, some twenty years later. He returned to the Alexanders and between them they decided to make something that was a film set first and foremost, but particularly could then be used as a visitor attraction. A lot more care was put into building the Hobbit holes and associated buildings and the whole thing was put together with a great deal of attention to detail and longevity.

The Hobbiton Movie Set, then, is a 125-acre plot within a 12,50 acre farm – so about 1% of the total area. Small as that percentage is, it still makes the Hobbiton set the largest movie set in the world. It’s clear, from the entry and coach ride over, that there is a vast amount of sheep farming going on.

and one gets the very first glimpse of the set on the bus ride over.

We then got the initial briefing from Rob, our guide (amazingly enough, originally from Guildford, a few miles from where we live in the UK – and he had lived in Knaphill which is the next village to Chobham! Small world…).

He gave us some preliminary information and made it clear that we were expected to stay with the group. Most people in the group had seen the Rings films and quite a few had seen the Hobbit trilogy; but apparently some 40% of visitors have not seen the films – but still they come.

There’s the formal entry point, with its inevitable focus for group photos

and then we got our first view over the film set.

Rob then led us on a route around the place, stopping to give us lots of background information about the creation of the set, and some of the things they had to get up to to make it look lifelike, such as false perspectives to underline the difference in size between four-foot high hobbits and 7-foot high wizards. To be a hobbit extra in the film one only had to be no more than of 5′ 6″ tall and have curly hair; apparently a lot of local farmers suited these criteria.

The tour round offers a view of more hobbit holes than one can shake a stick at; some are built to different scales to aid the false perspective mentioned above

and the main one was, of course, Bag End, where Bilbo Baggins lived, at the highest point of the set.

One could see that a lot of care and attention had been paid to detail and, where possible, to what Tolkien’s vision was for the village to add verisimilitude to the scenes,

even to the extent of ensuring that nasturtiums were growing outside Bag End, as described in the books.

A lot of thought had been put into planting a variety of flower species, some from middle England, where Tolkien lived, and some natives from New Zealand to give the place a sense of being otherworldly. Where clothes hung on lines, these had been put up and taken down every day so that paths were worn through the grass to make it look realistic.

The huge tree above Bag End was the subject of another interesting story from Rob.

It’s an oak tree. For the Rings films, a real, live oak tree was chopped down and erected there,. which in itself must have been a huge endeavour.  But it was propped up there without roots, and so by the time of the Hobbit films it was dead. So it was replaced by an entirely artificial tree – scaffolding poles and other materials make up the trunk and branches. At first, it had 370,000 artificial silk leaves attached to the branches. This was fine up to the point where there was a hiatus in the filming through Peter Jackson’s illness.  When they resumed, sunshine had discoloured the leaves. How to deal with this? Employ four art students, who hand-painted each leaf a different colour each side! The leaves we see today are different – there are only 200,000 of them and they are made out of some kind of polymer. But what an astonishing approach to take to getting verisimilitude.

Another staggering example was how they got Ian Holm (the original older Bilbo Baggins in the Rings films) into the films, as he couldn’t travel to New Zealand. So a replica set for the inside of Bag End that had been created in Wellington was transported over to Pinewood Studios in the UK in its entirety for the filming and then transported all the way back to Wellington.  Now that all filming is finished, it is apparently in Peter Jackson’s home as a guest suite.

Most of the hobbit holes (including Bag End on the site) consisted of frontage only, but two had been set up with complete interiors so that visitors could actually walk through and see what a “real” hobbit hole looked like inside. Jane went through one

and I went through the other.

Standing at the highest point of the set, outside Bag End, one could get a sense of just how the set fits into the vast surrounding farmland;

and could also get a view of the lake, with the mill and the Green Dragon pub,

and that was the last destination on the tour,

where Rob served his group with free drinks

in the pubs beautifully set-up interior.

Outside, beside the bridge

the mill had a moving water wheel

and one could sit outside and look back over the movie set towards Bag End.

We were then bussed back to the entry point where it only took us about a quarter of an hour to find the car among the car parks.  It really is quite an operation: every ten minutes a tour group of 40 guests goes round the set – that must be over 2,000 people a day, and it’s busy every day. My low expectations turned out to be wrong. OK, I still found it endlessly enraging that people consider a scene to be acceptable only if it includes them in it, which makes my photographer soul die a little every time I see it; but I found the whole thing really interesting, and quite heartwarming to see the care and attention that had been paid to making it as good an experience for as many people as possible.

We completed our journey to Rotorua past more great views and a sense of some incoming weather.

At one point we drove through a torrential rain storm, which, it seemed, followed us into Rotorua – we watched the rain lashing down as we settled in to our accommodation.  Our hotel was the Millennium Hotel, which seems very posh. Mind you, our room wasn’t ready when we got there, despite it being after official check-in time (but they gave us free coffee whilst we waited) and there’s a rather complicated relationship between the fridge in our room and the cabinet into which it just fails to fit. But there is a kettle, and a hot tub outside on a little deck for Jane, and seems very comfortable.

We have a couple of full days in Rotorua and a few Things To Get Up To. Stay tuned, and you’ll find out all about it!