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I have a few days to
catch up on - we've been very busy! We
left Auckland Sunday morning and made
the 2 hour drive to a town called MataMata - most famous for being one of the set
locations for the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies - welcome to Hobbiton,
Middle Earth. Admittedly, I thought it
was going to be pretty cheesy, but when we got there, the set was absolutely
amazing. Apparently, after the LOTR
movies, they were contracted to tear down the sets, but with the success of the
movies, the farm owners re-negotiated to have a permanent set built for the
Hobbit movies, and the set is regularly maintained. The detail is amazing, the plants and
wildlife are spectacular, plus they give you a bunch of trivia about the
movie.
Side note - rumor
has it that NZ has been in a severe drought recently, which you wouldn't know
since it has rained pretty much every day that we've been here! We are thankful that the rain breaks for
periods of time every day and we've been fairly lucky with timing certain
events between downpours. At least the
weather is warm enough to do our things even in the rain.
After Hobbiton, we
drove one more hour to Rotorua. Rotorua
is similar to Yellowstone, in that it is known for its geothermal
activity. In English, that means it
smells like sulfur/rotten eggs. I was
really happy when we booked our hotel late and we were still able to get right
on the edge of the scenic Lake Rotorua - little did I know that our hotel was
situated on a spot called Sulfur Flats.
To say that the smell is overpowering is an understatement… Luckily, we
are only in this hotel for two days and the rest of the town is fine. Smell aside, it is very pretty here - and
lots of fun stuff to do.
We had a rough
afternoon - spent a lot of it lost trying to find different spots to visit, and
finally made it to The Wai Topu Geo Thermal Park at 4:30. They close at 6 and don't let anyone in after
4:45. Plus, it was a raining pretty
hard. But we decided to go for it - we
pretty much had the whole place to ourselves in those conditions. The park was very cool and the highlights
were a flourscent green thermal pond (think Chicago River on St. Patrick's Day)
and bubbling mud pits that explode like geysers on a regular basis.
Damon's driving has
gotten better - I think the biggest challenge he is still having is turning on
the windshield wipers every time he wants to turn. Yes, even that is on the "wrong"
side. I'm sure a lot of people know that
New Zealanders are known as "kiwis" - the kiwi is a flightless bird,
which is nearly extinct. As Damon is
driving, he could hardly contain his excitement when he thought he saw a kiwi
on the side of the road. Sadly, it was
just a chicken.
We went out for a
nice dinner but by 9pm, we were tired and went back to the stinky hotel to
sleep. The food here has been okay -
they like gourmet presentation of food, but we haven't found great dishes. Things are literally stacked like 8"
high and everything contains beets.
We have a bunch of
fun stuff lined up for tomorrow! Can't
wait.
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