Driving Up to Mount Cook

After a wonderful and too short time in Wellington, the next morning we boarded a plane to Queenstown.  Now, the whole time we had either been planning this trip, or even were just up on the north island, everyone kept asking 'Are you going to Queenstown?  Wait until you see Queenstown and the South Island'.  We were so enamored with the North Island we couldn't even imagine how the South Island could be any better.  I won't say it was better, because we really loved the North Island as well, but it was certainly different.

We got to Queenstown and immediately rented a car and headed up to Mt Cook, where I had booked a hotel and stargazing tour.  They are a certified Dark Sky area, so I was really excited about seeing basically every star in the galaxy.  It was about a four hour drive up there, and I wish I had more pictures of our first day drive, but I am notoriously terrible at taking pictures so I don't have many.  For the first hour or two of our trip, just imagine these huge poplar trees lining the fields that had turned this amazing hue of gold for the autumn there.  Now imagine that they are in the valley with us leading up to these beautiful mountains on each side and that most of your trip is cloudy, but that every so often the sun came out from behind the clouds and shone on the mountains, also gold, and basically turned the entire valley in to this glowing, golden, beautiful thing.  I need my sister the poet here to describe this better because it really deserves more perfect description than I am giving it, but just take my word for it.  To say it was breathtaking is not an overstatement.  In the picture below if you can see, there was even a rainbow at one point.

Once we got through the valley we started up the side of a mountain towards our hotel.  We are truly in the middle of nowhere and we come around this turn and there is this beautiful lake.  I looked it up and it is called Lake Pukaki and it was a beautiful clear blue color that is caused by being fed from glacial waters.  There was some photography tour there taking pictures so we stopped right along with them and took some of our own (with much less impressive cameras).  Again, this picture is nowhere near doing this lake justice, but it was incredible and there was nothing there is the amazing thing.  I am used to lakes that are brown and still jammed with people and boats and lake houses.  There was nothing on this lake.  Just serenity.

As we made it up towards our hotel we started to get rained on and this is another time we realized how weather dependent so many things in New Zealand are.  We had spent half a day driving up to this hotel just to do this stargazing tour, and as soon as we got to our room, they called to let us know it was cancelled due to the rain.  I had been really looking forward to that tour so I was bummed, but truly the scenery (and the snow we would see the next day on the way back...did that hook you to read my next post?) was worth the drive.  Here is a view from our hotel room.

The next day we got up to drive to Wanaka and spend a night there to break up the trip back down and around the mountains that lead up to the west coast and the glaciers.  The drive got interesting and Wanaka was great!  Stay tuned...

Wellington

We woke up early and headed from Tongariro down south to Wellington.  It is the capital and is the second largest city in New Zealand with 250,000ish people.  I had actually been told by multiple people to skip Wellington, but since this is where WETA studios (the special effects team from the Lord of the Rings movies) was, so obviously it was on the agenda.

We were staying at the Intercontinental right in the middle of town, which was a great location.  There was a big statue of Gandalf in the lobby, because, obviously.  So we ran in and I had to basically head straight to the lobby to meet my tour.  We headed first to WETA studios and got to take a tour.  There were tons of props from movies they have worked on.  They mostly started with Peter Jacksons early films and the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films, but now work on just about every big budget film you hear about.  We got to see their big 3D printer, and a guy who used to be the swords maker for the queen making a sword.  It totally tickled the geeky parts of me!

The next part of the tour took us to the top of Mount Victoria to see some of the filming locations.  

So you know the scene where the hobbits are running away from the farmer and they come to the edge of a hill and fall down it and on to a road and start picking mushrooms?  Then Frodo tells them to get off the road?  Well....THIS IS THE ROAD!

I know, right?  Can you hardly contain your excitement or what?  Anyway, this actually is the road and there are several other scenes that were filmed right around here too.  I was in hobbit heaven and I really loved every minute of it.

We really ended up liking Wellington and wishing we had another day to spend there.  There is a great museum there called the Te Papa that I wish we had had time to see it.  They also have these cool houses that are all built up on the sides of the hills because that is what there is around there.  But there are no roads that go up there, so everyone has their car ports on the side of the road and they park in them.  And then they and their neighbors share these little cable cars that they take up to their houses.  It is nuts!  Think about trying to move and putting a couch in a tiny cable car to get it up to your house.

But alas, like many things I wanted to do, our itinerary didn't allow for more time here, so we had to move on to Queenstown the next day!

Tongariro Crossing

For our third night in New Zealand, we were staying in the Chateau Tongariro, which we have been affectionately calling The Overlook.  When you turn on the long road up to it, and with the snowy mountains in the background the similarity is eerie.  The hotel is older, and kind of has that old world charm to it. 

We checked in and asked about the hike we were supposed to be going on the next day.  (Note: In New Zealand they don't call it hiking, they call it tramping.  But I am going to call it hiking so as to avoid saying I went 'tramping' all day - this is a family blog people!)  I had been watching it for a couple of weeks, and almost every single day it had been cancelled due to weather and high winds at the top of the crater.  But for us it was set to be All Go!  So we had a nice dinner there, and then turned in early to get some sleep before such a long hike.  Ok, you got me, we have been going to sleep early every night.  Partially because of all the activities making us tired, partly because we are old. 

The next morning we got up and went to get breakfast and met some other Americans who had just done the hike the day before.  They said it was one of the worst things they've ever done and that it was bone chilling cold and rainy most of the hike and they were miserable.  Sooooo, that was not really what I was hoping to hear, but on we went anyway!  And we got SO LUCKY.  The weather was 100% amazing all day.  We had read that we needed thermal under clothes, plus several layers and a rain jacket.  So we were constantly peeling off outer layers because we were so warm!

The Tongariro Crossing is a full day hike.  It is 19.2 kilometers (which I think is about 14 miles), and the first half is a LOT of climbing up to the top of the red crater.  We had to take lots of breaks to catch our breath because it was hard and the altitude made it hard to catch your breath sometimes.  We walked right past Mount Ngauruhoe, which was used as Mt Doom in the Lord of the Rings movies.  Then once we got to the very top, we overheard a person who was guiding a group of people talk about how they filmed the battles that took place in Morder in this valley we were looking down at.  I just sort of nonchalantly joined their group for a while to glean as much LOTR trivia as I could!

Once you finish what they call the hardest part of going up hill to get to the top of the red crater, you are rewarded with these amazing views and the Emerald Lakes.  There are just these random pristine bodies of water that range from emerald green to a light blue.  They are absolutely stunning, and I just marveled at how these unbelievable lake just exist somewhere so remote.  So we took our time around there and took lots of pictures before starting the mostly downhill hike to finish up.  If you are thinking going downhill the rest of the way seems easy, yikes, it wasn't!  We basically were walking at a downward incline for almost 3 hours.  So your knees are pretty mad at you by the end.

The shuttle drops you off at the beginning and picks you up at the end, and we all of the sudden realized we had been lallygagging too much and had to pick up the pace to make it to meet the shuttle in time!  So the last couple of hours we were hauling it downhill.

Once we finished we were totally beat.  But it was such a feeling of accomplishment!  I have never hiked this far in my life and it was definitely one of the best things I've ever done. 

That night we took showers and ordered room service because we were TIRED.  The next morning, we had to get up kind of early because we were heading to our next location - Wellington! - for, you guessed it!, more Lord of the Rings tours.

Concerning Hobbits

After leaving Auckland, we headed toward Matamata, which is where the Shire/Hobbiton is.  As soon as we arrived I was sort of freaking out and Jason said to me 'I just want you to know you are in a safe place.  Feel free to let all your dorkiness out and I will fully support it'.  Or something like that, but basically he encouraged me to have absolutely no chill while we were there.  Which was good, cause I didn't.

To get there, we took a bus down through some beautiful mountains and sheep farms, watched a video about some of the history, and then there it was!!  It was perfectly preserved - they even have full time gardeners whose job it is to keep it just in the perfect condition like it was in the movie.  We walked around with our tour guide for about an hour and a half and learned all kinds of trivia and got to take lots of pictures and finally ended up at the Green Dragon where we got to enjoy a beer.

Then, to top off my Hobbit obsessed day, we drove a couple of hours out to Waitomo and stayed in a Hobbit Hole Motel!!!  It was literally in the middle of nowhere in the woods, but it was so gorgeous there and totally worth it.  When we woke up the next morning and went out to the car, there were three sheep just grazing right by the drive.  So cute!!  I am going to go ahead and say Jason did not think it was as amazing as I did.  He is not a fan of 'rustic', but he was a trooper and roughed it with me in the woods.

The next day we drove over to the Waitomo Glow Worm caves.  I am a sucker for a cave tour anyway, and this one was the best.  They take you down in to the caves for a tour, then you board a boat in the pitch black dark and take a ride in it until you reach the other side.  All over the ceiling are these little tiny glow worms!  They have bioluminescence to attract pray, but they basically made the cave look like a glowing night sky.

From there, we drove out to Taupo where we took this crazy jet boat tour out to Huka Falls.  This boat takes you up and down the river and does 360 turns and splashes water all over you for about 30 minutes!  Then we got right up to the falls and played around in the foamy water there in the boat.

After the jet boat tour, we made our way south around Lake Taupo to get to our hotel, the Chateau Tongariro, where we were going to stay for 2 nights.

We are doing a lot of driving.  It is anywhere from 1-3 hours between any of these things, so we are in the car a lot.  But again, I cannot stress how BEAUTIFUL it is here.  Every turn is some new magnificent landscape.  We keep having people say to us 'just wait until you get to the south island!'.  But I can't imagine it being any more wonderful.

Next up was the Tongariro Crossing, so stay tuned for that!

We Made It!!

After a flight to Houston, a 7 hour layover and 17 hours on a plane, we finally made it Auckland!  The flight was actually great.  We flew Air New Zealand direct from Houston to Auckland, and the flight attendants were (**gasp**) FRIENDLY!  Can you imagine?  I had fully prepared in many ways so that I would be able to get the most sleep possible on the flight.  My carry on bag looked like a small pharmacy, but it worked!  We got lots of sleep and landed in Auckland about 8am, so we had the whole day ahead of us!  But we weren't tired until about 7:15, which is when we basically congratulated ourselves for staying up so late and hit it.

In Auckland we stayed at the Hilton Auckland, which was right on the water and a great place to stay.  Everyone was super nice, and they even gave us access to their gym area so we could shower or freshen up since our room wouldn't be ready until much later.  Then we headed out in to the downtown area in search of breakfast and a good flat white!  The downtown area is great.  It reminded me a lot of San Francisco because there is an awesome waterfront with lots of shops and restaurants, only nicer really.  It was also very hilly, just like the entire country.  So you would be walking way up and down hills, just no trolley cars that I saw.  Then all over downtown had lots of great places to shop/eat/get coffee.  I am pretty sure it has to hold a record for number of coffee shops that aren't Starbucks in a downtown area.  Like there would be 3 on any given block!  They take their coffee seriously, which I can totally get behind.

Jason has a friend who lives in Auckland so we met up with them for a late lunch at an Irish pub on the Viaduct Harbour and it was the most beautiful sunny day so we sat on a patio and hung out for a while.  The next morning we just headed straight out to get a rental car ,and head to Matamata (where Hobbiton is, but that's a whole other post!).  In case you weren't aware, Kiwis drive on the LEFT hand side of the road.  It is truly challenging.  I think it takes both of our brains to figure out how to turn in to what lane and to let the other person know they are WAY to close to the edge of the road.  It is a serious exercise of the brain to be constantly thinking 'stay on the left, stay on the left, stay on the left'.  AND just sitting on the left and not driving feels really strange.  Like you constantly want to be reaching for the wheel or hitting the breaks.  But we are learning slowly but surely!

So far here is what I know about New Zealand - it is GORGEOUS!!!  If you have any thoughts in your head about how amazingly beautiful it is, but aren't sure it would live up to they hype.  Be assured.  IT DOES.  Every time we turn a corner there is some new grandeur to behold.  We have literally laughed out loud multiple times at just how ridiculous the landscape is.  Like it can't possibly be real.  Plus there are cows and sheep EVERYWHERE!  I feel like I read somewhere that something like 50% of the people in New Zealand were farmers.  Or maybe it just feels that way.  But it is just beautiful to drive along seeing these little white dots all over the hills.  This is one of the first places we stopped outside of Auckland and took a picture. 

So that was day 1 and 1/2 in the books.  Next up Hobbits and Glow Worms...stay tuned!

I'm Baaaaack

Hello out there in cyberland!  I am pretty sure the only people who have blogs any more are like famous people who have cookbooks or are crafty, and I am neither of those people (yet), but I have decided to revive my blog, mainly because of the fact that I am about to turn 40, so Jason and I are going to New Zealand for two weeks!!  The reason I started my blog in the first place was really more for myself and to have a place to capture my thoughts because otherwise they fly right out of my brain and I never hear from them again.  I started it because of trips I was about to take, so what better reason to bring it back than another trip that I really don't want to forget, right?

Now not to brag, but even though I did start it really for myself, I did end up with almost 20 people following.  Wait, how many followers DO you have to have to be a celebrity blogger?  I should look in to some product placement advertisements.  Anyway, probably none of those people have been checking back to see if I have updated in a while.  And really those people are the people that I was following back, and after going back through all the blogs I followed, I realized I was not the only one to abandon blog world in the last few years.  I think I have only one faithful blogger friend left (hi Lacey!). 

It was pretty fun to go back and look at the old blogs I used to follow.  It was like everyone was posting their merry little lives away and then one day stopped.  No one had put like 'hey this is my last blog ever...it's been fun!'.  It was like 'you won't believe what little Johnny and I saw at the zoo today', and then they dropped off the face of the planet.  I mean that is exactly what I did.  Actually in one of my last blogs I talked about a surprise coming that I would announce SOON, and then I just quit.  The funny thing was that the surprise was that I was going to start ANOTHER blog totally dedicated to travel.  Excuse me while I laugh myself silly thinking I had the time for that.  But who knows, maybe one day I will start that blog up.  Wait, does Samantha Brown have a blog?  Maybe I do still have a chance at that celebrity thing! 

I have honestly been a little hesitant to start a new post for the first time in five years.  There is a very real chance that this is the last post I ever write.  However, I am basically trying to motivate myself to keep writing and tracking those memories that are no longer actually in my brain.  Going through my blog it has been funny to read old posts and literally have no memory of writing it at all or even experiencing what I was talking about in the post.  Mom brain is real y'all. 

So here is my bloggal (like verbal only through a blog) commitment to you my reader (hi sister!).  I will do my utmost to try to keep it up and especially to try to track my New Zealand trip.  It is my #1 place in the entire world I have wanted to go and I am SO SO excited.  I am also the hugest Lord of the Rings nerd that I know, so I am taking classes in Elvish before I leave so I can be ready in the very real possible case that I encounter Legolas.

Ok, first blog post in 5 years done.  Whew, that was easier than I thought it was going to be.  Sometimes a giant leap starts with a small step...or something like that...right?  Ok, peeps, gonna go now.  Stay tuned!