Gandalf, Geysers + Glow Worms

Today was a great day in New Zealand (named incidentally, after Zeeland in the Netherlands 😁). It started bright and early with a 6:30 AM pick up by our tour guide and driver, Chris. He had a lot of interesting facts and information! We picked up two other groups, a family of four from Houston and three travelers on holiday from the Netherlands.

After an hour and a half bus ride we arrived at middle earth (Hobbiton, the location where the outside scenes from Frodo Baggins’ village in the Lord of the Rings films were filmed). It is out in the middle of farmland, with rolling green hills covered with sheep and cattle. We (really just Ken) got some souvenirs in the gift shop and then a Hobbiton guide led us through the village. They went into an incredible amount of detail making the six middle earth films, including a large fake oak tree where each one of 300,000 plastic leaves were individually painted and attached. We got to see Bag End, Bagshot Row, and the mill. The hobbit holes were varied in size to account for the different size of the characters (Hobbits are a little over 3 feet tall and the wizard Gandalf was full-sized), despite all the actors being regular sized people. We ended the tour at the Green Dragon Inn where we were given a souvenir mug and cup of ale or cider. We sipped our ale as we sat by the toasty fire.

After Hobbiton we headed for Rotorua which sits on two tectonic plates which are hitting each other creating a giant area of boiling mud and water. There is also a geyser called Te Puia that erupted 15-20 feet into the air. We had an excellent buffet meal at the geyser.

Our final stop of the day was at the Waitomo Glow Worm Caves. We were led on our tour by Nah, a descendent of the Māori Chief who discovered the cave. After a brief talk about the history of the cave we went in. It was so cool! There were so many stalactites and stalagmites slowly (so very slowly) growing together. We made it to a large space called Cathedral Cave which has amazing acoustics. We were regaled by a couple of our fellow tourists with songs! A river runs through the cave and we took a boat out onto the river to see the glow worms. In order to see the glow worms there are no lights in this part of the cave and it was almost pitch black. We moved away from the dock and a short way down the river we came into a section of the cave with thousands of bright blue glow worms across the ceiling. Our guide moved the boat by pulling us along a rope strung from the walls. Due to recent flooding we could not continue down the river so we sat for a few minutes just marveling at the beauty on display above us. It was then time to climb out of the cave and return to the bus for our 2 1/2 hour drive back to Auckland.

We finished the day with dinner at the Chargrill and headed back to our AirBnB to plan our last day on vacation. Tomorrow night we head home. What a long, strange, wonderful, trip it’s been. Czytaj więcej