Further up the road is Rakaia, world-famous for it's salmon fishing. Not native to New Zealand, the locals determined that, since trout fishing was such a good tourist draw in New Zealand, something unique would help their community to thrive. The idea took off, and the town could afford to erect this statue to their entrepreneurship. The chinook salmon are wild, traveling from the sea up the Rakaia river to spawn.
Ok - so the bridge is a bit old. It's also one lane, with a sharp curve at the other side!
Just outside of Christchurch is the Cookie Time Factory, a great place for "seconds" (broken or misshapen cookies). You can even order their most popular cookie online (Original Chocolate Chunk)! http://www.cookietime.co.nz/wbc.html
I did not take advantage of opportunities to go on "Lord of the Rings" tours before Christchurch because of my conversations with travelers who had. Most were disappointed because they expected to see the setting exactly as they saw in the movies. Well, of course, the sets are no longer there except for Hobbiton. That setting has been preserved more than others (although the landscaping has been removed) because Peter Jackson anticipated that it would be needed for the next movie in the series, The Hobbit, which is currently in production.
However, I did go on the Edoras tour out of Christchurch because I knew that the setting itself would be exactly the same as what we saw in the movie (without the city of Edoras, of course). It was well-worth the time and money, I thought. The owner of the land was paid $1 million NZ because he could not pasture his cattle and horses during the entire filming process, plus some of his horses were used in the film.
This is the long view as we approached the valley (which is a gorgeous locale, incidentally). "Edoras, " or Mt. Sunday will be more visible in the pictures that follow.
As you can see below, the top of Mt. Sunday is not a very big area. So how did Peter Jackson place an entire city there? Why, through the magic of Hollywood. The set was first seen as Aragorn and Gandalf ride up to it. A long shot can make a smaller object look larger. The filming on the set was done on Mt. Sunday, but the Golden Hall was a facade. All of the interior shots were made in a studio, and whenever the camera is looking out the doors at the landscape, it was inserted digitally. The mountains and other aspects of the terrain, however, are totally real. I could die there.
When it came time to tear down the set, the ground was littered with nails and screws. But no worries - the tourists who followed picked them up!
Our tour guide told us this story and lamented that he looks for some items every time he visits, but had given up because he assumed they had all been found. However, I knew that the ground "churns" due to warming and cooling. Sure enough, without looking very hard at all I found half a dozen well-rusted nails and screws (Can you say "eBay?")
Factoid: In "Return of the King," when we see the Rohirrim charge the orc armies attacking Gondor, most of the riders were women. The men were working the ranches! Incidentally, all of the "men" and horses that get killed (especially by the Nazgul) were inserted digitally.
Factoid: Peter Jackson had all of the tussocks on Mt. Sunday removed for the filming. They were temporarily planted in a hill opposite from these views of the mount. When the set was dismantled, Peter not only had the tussocks replaced but added hundreds more. Tussock grass is a native species which is being dominated by a similar grass imported from Africa, originally thought to be a better feed for cattle.
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