Let the online hobbit hunts begin.  Roughly eleven months after a number of camera-equipped cars were spotted rolling across the island country, Google Street View has started to offer imagery recorded in New Zealand.

New Zealand is, in case you weren’t aware, where Peter Jackson filmed his "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.  Hence the hobbit crack.  However, it wouldn’t be too surprising if a few people did put on costumes for the Street View cars, and in any event, at least a few spots used in the films should visible.

 

Other highlights (as listed by a Google Maps New Zealand page) include the Stone Store in Kerikeri, the Beehive in Wellington, and Cathedral Square in Christchurch.  So even non-Tolkien nuts will have plenty of interesting stuff to see.

Privacy advocates don’t have anything to fear, either, since Google’s license plate- and face-blurring technology has been put to use.

It’s interesting to see Google Street View head to New Zealand; the pictures probably won’t prove as useful to the average resident of Mountain View as images of, say, Mexico or Canada.  But whether legal complications or a leaning towards the picturesque is at work is anybody’s guess.