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!
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