I, Tanner Croddy, went to four movie sets so far this trip. The first movie set was on Castaway Island in Fiji, where the movie Castaway, starring Tom Hanks, was filmed. The second movie set was the Hobbiton, in Matamata, New Zealand, where The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were filmed. The third was in Halong Bay, Vietnam where King Kong, Skull Island and the...
Leaving Christchurch on New Zealand’s South Island by the Tranz Alpine train is a thrill. The cold morning air wakes you like no coffee ever could. The train cars have a domed roof so passengers can peer out at the farms that eventually give way to the Alps without having the squish your face up to the glass. There are two children sitting across the...
The procession of peaks are like endless crests of white and green dinosaurs marching into the horizons all around us with some wearing cloudy shawls on their collars under crisp winter blue skies. Heading South into the Fjordlands from Queenstown, you lose all sense of scale. On your right, Lake Wakatipu spreads calmly into the distance, bordered on the opposite...
Walking towards the very heart of the city, Cathedral Square, we don’t know what to expect. A New Zealander questions our desire to see the Cathedral, saying, “It’s a pile of rubble.” We circle the closed off church, finding most of it standing. Sadly the Western wall is gone, replaced by massive iron trusses preventing gravity from completing what a massive...