NERD BATTLE

Twizel, New Zealand.

The town that never was...supposed to be there more than a few years. The town was constructed peice by peice a long time ago in order to service the men, who were building canals and dams for hydro, and their families. Well after the work was done, residents elected to keep the town where it was - the original plan was to move it. After all, each house was one of those mobile-type above ground houses that could be placed on a truck and moved away.

And such, the town of Twizel remains. It's not very pretty and it's nothing to write home about but the location could not be more convenient for exploring the beautiful Mackenzie Country which surrounds it and which also houses such treasures such as Lindis Pass, Lake Tekapo and Pukaki, Mount Cook and Peleanor Fields.

Yes, Peleonor Fields, where the epic battle for Rohan took place in the third Lord of the Rings book, Return of the King.

If you ever find yourself in Twizel, for some reason, and with nothing to do, I suggest taking the LOTR two-hour tour from Discovery Tours.

I'm not a huge LOTR fan - I never read the books - but I do have a family connection to the film since my brother-in-law is tight with Peter Jackson and worked on all three films. I also thought the films were dope, plus my bestie is obsessed with the films. We had already visited the set back in 2003, in Wellington, and saw an epic battle with orcs being filmed, and got to touch and feel all the costumes. It was frickin' awesome.

Anyway, this time I decided to treat my bf with this epicly nerdy tour (Merry Xmas, Baby!) since he had read all the books and loved the films.

This tour was pretty low-key - we were lead by Vernon, a man who worked on the film while it filmed for three months outside of Twizel, and went around to the private land/farm where those battle scenes were filmed. We heard lots of the gossip about what happened on the set - really cool tidbits - and watched the corresponding scenes from the actual DVD. It was cool to hear about how some shots were made too - we were sitting in a van on the field and you could see in some scenes that everything looked as it did when we were there except maybe the mountains to the right were lifted from another scene.

There is a lot to explain - our heads are bursting with all this secret filming knowledge, but I don't want to bore my readers. Instead I'll just leave you with some pictures of the best part of the tour: dressing up in costume and having nerd battles with each other. Enjoy!!