North Island, New Zealand

Greetings again! We're back to report on our travels through the lovely north island of New Zealand.

Here's another shot of the islands of Tonga taken from our connector flight to the capital.

We then flew to Auckland and got in in the middle of the night. Auckland is the biggest city in New Zealand, but not the capital. People generally use it as a jumping-off point on the start of their trip as there's not too much of interest to do unless you want to do some sailing. We'd had enough time on the water lately, so we mostly used our time there to rest, relax, do some laundry, see a movie, etc.

One activity we decided to do was Kelly Tarlton's Antarctic Adventure. It sounded good when Lisa read about it, but we should have known by the cheesy shuttle that it wasn't going to be that great. :)

But they did have some penguins!
After Auckland we drove up to the Northland area of the island and stayed at the Bay of Islands. We visited the Treaty of Waitangi lands which is where the British government signed their first treaty with the Maori people.

We also went on a dolphin watching/swimming trip. We did find a large pod of bottlenose dolphins, but they had some juveniles with them so we couldn't swim. They were fun to watch though!

They also took us to the "Hole in the Rock" which was (just) large enough for our boat to pass through and turn around in.

We drove over to the west coast (it's pretty narrow up there) to visit a national preserve of kauri trees. There aren't many left because of logging, but now they're protected. The few old ones that remain are very impressive, but hard to capture in a picture (much like sequoias).

The next day we drove down to Rotorua. Along the way we stopped at Sheepworld which has a show on sheepherding and shearing. Here are the sheep being brought in by the "eye dog" who rounds them up without any barking or anything (they have another dog, the "huntaway" for that).
And Lisa got to feed some lambs. Aaah...
We also stopped in Hamilton at their lovely botanical gardens. They have several gardens designed to reflect different eras or landscapes. This was the Italian garden.

On our first day in Rotorua we went to a town nearby called MataMata which has the farm that they used for the set of Hobbiton for the Lord of the Rings movies (you know we had to go find something LOTR-related! :P ). The producers had looked all over the country, but loved this spot because it had a little lake with a big tree, just as described in the books. And it had enough land and rolling hills to block out any signs of modern civilization. Apparently the movie company meant to tear down all the hobbit holes after production, but there were weather delays. By the time they could get back to it, the farm was already getting requests for visits, so they asked the company if they could keep what remained of the sets.

So here we are at Hobbiton!


Looking out across towards the lake and party tree (for Bilbo's birthday).

Hugging the party tree at our tour guides insistence (he seemed a little disappointed that we weren't in costume or anything, I must say). Apparently there have been several proposals made under this tree now that they're doing tours.


Lisa holding some of the styrofoam rock used to make a bridge. Ah, movie magic!

Escaping out of the rain into Bag End.
After Hobbiton we drove back to Rotorua for some Zorbing for Lisa. Rotorua has a bunch of adventure activities such as bungie jumping and Zorbing. Going down in a giant plastic ball seemed the most fun and safe to Lisa. That day was pretty windy, so they were only doing the Hydro-Zorb where you also get a bunch of water put in with you. Here's a view of the track. You could go straight down or do a more zigzag route. Lisa went for the zigzag.

She tried to stay upright, but by the first turn was getting tossed around pretty well.
Soaking wet, but lots of fun!

The next day we went and explored the thermal parks for which Rotorua was originally famous. There are geothermal mudpools all over the city. We visited Te Whakarewarewatangaoteopetauaawahiao (which means "the gather together of the war party of Wahiao) which is still owned and run by the Maori tribe. Here are some good mud bubbles and sulphuric colors.
Also, they have a geyser that goes off about once per hour.

At the same park they had a Maori concert and two schools, one for weaving and one for carving, that take students from all over the country.

We are currently in Wellington, about to head to the South Island. We have a few more pictures of the North Island from a very rainy walk that we took, those will be up in the next post.