Welcome to Tolkien Trail Tours!
Your tour starts with a flight to New Zealand's largest city,
, where you will be met by your friendly and knowledgeable tour guide, ready to start visiting filming sites on the
. The first stop is a
near Matamata, where you will see
and Party Tree, as well as a number of hobbit residences. Proceeding to
, the nation's capital, we can visit the Weta Workshop where many of the special effects for the films were created.
stood in for the Gardens of Isengard. In the surrounding area, Kaitoke Regional Park was the location for the filming of
, and the Hutt River was used to represent the River Anduin in the scene when the travelers were leaving
. Driving a bit north, we will see the
, where Aragorn was filmed searching for the Paths of the Dead, followed by Tongariro National Park. This is the location of
, Mount Ngauruhoe and Mount Tongariro, all of which were used to film scenes involving
.
After a short trip across Cook Strait to
, we will proceed to Mt Sunday, used to film
, the capital of Rohan. There is nothing left of the set, as is the case for most of the sites on the
, but the scenery is spectacular! Further south, in the Southern Alps near
, is Mount Cook National Park, where you will find the town of Twizel, near which the Battle of
was filmed. Not far from there is Glenorchy, site of the
used for Lothlorien. On our way west, we will pass through the Kawarau Gorge, used to film the
(which were added using CGI over the live footage) and drive along the Waiau River, another of the multiple rivers that stood in for the River
on our way to Te Anau, gateway to
National Park.
This brings our Tolkien Trail Tour to a close. We hope you enjoyed it, and don't mind being left in the middle of this spectacular scenery - please enjoy the glaciers before working out how to get home.
