Erik has wanted to travel to New Zealand for over 30 years! I was very thrilled to travel with him. WARNING: this will be a long post. I don't expect you to read it all, but it's a great way for me to remember our awesome trip!
First stop: Auckland. We left Sydney very early on Australia day. We were sorry we weren't there to attend the Yabun Festival at the park right across from our accommodations, but another time, maybe.
Our first adventure was getting our rental car and driving to our hotel, about 20 minutes away. Erik did very well driving on the wrong side of the road, but I think we were both a bit nervous. We took the bus into the CBD, Central Business District. Then took a ferry to Devonport where we had a yummy seafood dinner. Erik loved his green mussels.
Sunday morning we went to church. There is only one Community of Christ congregation in New Zealand. We met the wonderful congregation members and guess what? We got to help in a working bee! It really was fun. We loaded items into a trailer to take to the landfill and we sorted lots of old papers and books and magazines into "keep", "recycle" and "donate". I saw many familiar church names, even in far away NZ. One article in one of the magazines (Herald) was written by Mamma Marge Nilsen. Such a small world in our small church. We shared in morning tea/lunch and then took the advice of Arran and drove thru the Waitakere Range Regional Park to Piha beach. Gorgeous. Erik climbed Te Piha, Lion Rock which is a sacred site to the Te Kawerau a Maki people. After driving the old rental car up and down and around the mountain road, we decided to trade it in for a car that worked better. Good idea!
Monday morning we drove south, our first destination was the famous Waitomo Glowworm caves. On the way, we stopped for lunch and a quick visit of the Pirongia Historic Visitor Centre. The docent was a super sweet lady and we truly enjoyed visiting with her. She told us to stop at the Alexandra Redoubt, which was built in 1872 by the British settlers to protect them from the Maori, who actually never attacked them here. Aotearoa New Zealand was one of the last places in the world to be colonised by European settlers (or refugees as Aunty Margaret calls them).
We had seen glowworms 10 years ago at Lamington Plateau in Australia, on a creek wall. It was so impressive that we wanted to make sure to go to Waitomo. We took a 30 minute walk thru part of a limestone cave, mostly to get our eyes used to the dark. At one point we were in a big cavern and our guide asked if anyone wanted to sing a song. Erik and I sang, "May the Longtime Sun shine on You". That was memorable! Then we all climbed aboard large row boats, in the complete dark and silence, with our guide pulling us along using ropes that were attached above us. It was so magical to see thousands of glowworms on the walls of the caves, it looked like stars in the night sky. We couldn't take photos inside so this is a photo of a post card I bought. Super awesome experience!
Then we headed to a Bed 'n Breakfast called "Trout Heaven". Our friends, Ian and Janice, had told us about their friends who run this BnB. Erik really wanted to fish so it was the perfect place for us. After an awkward first meeting (we showed up a day earlier than they expected), all went well. Sorry Wendy! Erik got to fish 3 times and caught and released 7 Rainbow Trout. It was a beautiful home near the river and reminded us many times of Montana, except when it reminded us of Middle Earth!!! And one nice thing: we didn't have to worry about anything dangerous: no snakes or bear or cougar or poisonous spiders etc. Such a lovely visit. Craig and Wendy have been to Montana and loved it. So we talked about the US quite a bit and invited them to come fishing in OR. What a superb visit for us! Thanks Caldwells!
Several of the day trips we took were sure interesting. One day we went on a huge swinging bridge above a dam and then to Blue Springs. So many spectacular views! And then, our favorite: Hobbiton. We love the Lord of the Rings movies and it was so fun to see Hobbiton. It was only 30 minutes away from Trout Heaven. Sir Peter Jackson, the director, and New Line Cinema flew in a helicopter looking at the different farms to find a perfect location. The 1250 acre Alexander sheep and cattle farm worked perfectly. The paddocks were hilly, with a pond and a big tree for the Party Tree. The NZ army first helped by making a 1.5 km road into Hobbiton in 1999. Filming for LOTR took 3 months and then in 2009, when preparing for the Hobbit, they took 2 years and made Hobbiton more permanent. They only filmed there for 12 days in 2011, with 400 people on site. Seeing the 39 Hobbit holes was so fun. Even though 600,000 people visit each year, it didn't feel crowded with tourists. Really Magical!! We were here on Bryn's birthday and we thought of him often. He first read LOTR as a 4th grader!
We headed south to Rotorua, stopping first at Tewhakarewarewatangaoteopetaukawahiao! Also known as the Whakarewarewa Thermal Village. This is a Maori Cultural Center, but what made it even more interesting is that it is the home for 60 people, who live near the hot springs/geysers and mud pots. They use them for some of their cooking and baths. We enjoyed our tour guide and the dance/poi/haka!
We went climbing in the Rotorua Redwoods Treewalk, a 700-metre long, eco-tourism walk in the heart of Rotorua’s Redwood Forest. Consisting of a series of 28 suspension bridges, traversing 27 majestic Redwood trees that are more than 117-years-old. The height of the walkway ranges between 9-metres and 20-metres. Redwoods were brought to NZ, hoping they would be a good hardwood to replace the Kauri trees, which were over harvested. However, because of the consistent moist weather, the Redwoods grow much faster and are a soft wood. You can see in the picture with me, that the rings are over an inch wide!
We took a river cruise to Haka Falls, which was impressive! 58,000 gallons of water/second flows over the waterfall, which is 35 feet high.
We ended our cruise at a dam, where we found out they filmed the scene with the Dwarves and Bilbo, riding in the barrels to escape the Elves!! Cool.
We ended our week in New Zealand in Wellington. Weta Workshop created for the Lord of the Rings movies and we got to meet a troll. Then we saw Gandolf at the Wellington airport. Awesome!
We also went to the impressive museum, Te Papa. One of the exhibits: Gallipoli: The scale of our war combines the world of museums with the world-class creative artistry of Weta Workshop to immerse you in the eight-month Gallipoli campaign.
The ground-breaking exhibition tells the story through the eyes and words of eight ordinary New Zealanders who found themselves in extraordinary circumstances. Each is captured frozen in a moment of time on a monumental scale – 2.4 times human size.
The giant sculptures took a staggering 24,000 hours to create, and countless hours were spent researching their rich histories.
We also got to see eight Terracotta Warriors and two horses. Quite interesting.
Goodbye to a lovely country. We loved the accent and the friendly people. It was interesting to discover how different NZ is to Australia. It was great to have so many signs written in both English and Maori. Erik's favorite things were fishing, mussels, the Thermal village, the museum and fishing! I loved Hobbiton, visiting with Craig and Wendy and the church members in Auckland, Licorice cafe and being in the country.
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