That’s a really big boat
Today we had a pretty early start to get to the ferry, but 1st took a few great pics of the Harbour just outside our hotel in Picton. We got to the terminal around 8:00 am. We dropped off the car, got checked in just in time for our boat ride. The ride was about 3 hours long and the boat was really nice. For the first part I read for a while and checked out the boat with dad including beautiful views of the Marlborough Sounds and even some glimpses back to the Southern Alps. After a while we went up to the kids area which had video games(ya yeet) and stayed up there for about an hour. For the last hour we read for about half an hour and finished playing in the kids room for the last 1/2 hour. Once we got the car and bags we headed over to Wellington,had lunch, checked out some funky outdoor artwork and went to a museum (Te Papa) which had everything! It was a history museum, a science museum and a bunch of other things- including great Maori art, an exhibit on immigration to New Zealand and awesome larger than life war statues detailing the NZ military involvement in the battle of Gallipoli in WWI! After some ice cream and excellent mini donuts, we hit the road for a while to get to our next airb&b in Whanganui- got take-out Persian food and caught a movie.
Geothermal Wednesday
Today we explored the many geothermal hot spots (pun intended) of Rotorua as well as the volcanoes of Tongariro National Park. We started off our day with a delicious breakfast at an old train station turned cafe in a town called National Park. After that we took a quick drive to Mount Tongariro and Mount Ngauruhoe (seen in “the lord of the rings” “playing” Mt Doom) as well as mount Ruapehu- a huge snow covered volcano. There we took a quick hike through hills that were apparently created by the volcano sending huge chunks of rock flying in every direction. Next we drove up to a natural hot spring where we spent an hour or so relaxing in the gentle heat of the springs. Moving on we went down to Orakei Korako, a place where there is tons of geothermal activity, including geysers, boiling mud pools, and hot springs way too hot to swim in. With beautiful colors, a sulfur smell and steam coming out everywhere, it felt liek dinosaurs should show up any minute. We walked around for a while and saw a really funny bird that couldn’t fly straight and didn’t really care about us coming close at all. We took the boat back to our car and drove of for our hotel. After a failed attempt to find glow worms in the some really old woods, we went to a delicious steak house with questionably good service and finished the day off with ice cream. Back at our air bnb we enjoyed our own hot pool- with water straight from a geothermal area near the owner’s house.
Hobbits!
Today we started off with lunch and a walk around Roturua. The city park, Kuirau has some serious geothermal activity with steaming pools and sulfur smells all over. Everywhere in the town, you see steam coming out of sewers and even people’s backyards! After walking around Lake Roturua and the city gardens we went to Hobbiton!
Hobbiton is the massive set where they filmed the shire for lord of the rings and the hobbit. We drove down a little road that to caver up the fact that they were filming, they claimed it was A random “road building exercise.” We then entered into Hobbiton which was very cool because the set was designed so that you couldn’t see it until you were inside it! Our tour guide then talked about the way they filmed the scenes. They made two different size hobbit holes, some 5 and a half feet and some 3 feet. This way they could shoot Frodo or Bilbo in front of the 5 foot one to look like a hobbit but shoot Gandalf in front of the 3 foot ones to make him look like a giant in comparison. This is called “forced perspective” and tons of different movies use some form of it. He also showed us all the crazy detail that was used in the making of the set, like how when the leaves of one tree were too dark, all of them had to be repainted by hand! And also how they faked mold on fences and gates to make them look old and worn. We also saw “Bag End” the Baggin’s home in the movies and got to go inside one of the holes, which was quite anticlimactic, as it was just dirt and rock inside because Hobbiton was a purely exterior set. After that we went down to the “green dragon inn” and got ginger beer before heading back to the car. We then drove down a crazy windy road to get to our air bnb in Tiarua.
There’s a hole in the ground! Actually, more like 200 of em!
Today me(bee) jay and dad started off the day with a quick hike up Mount Paku to a amazing view. It was also on a volcano witch made the hike an “interesting” one. After we all got going we headed over to the beach right near our airb&b. We then drove to breky and i got lasagna, jay got chia pudding, mom got a veggie quiche and dad got white bait fritters. We then went to hot water beach. The cool thing about hot water beach is you can dig your own hot tub in the beach at low tide! It’s really hard to maintain because you have to get the right balance of the boiling hot water coming from the geothermal source and the cool tidal ocean water. You also have to work with your neighbors to maintain the walls of your tub and make sure it is deep enough! The nice part is that you can rent shovels so you can dig quicker! After that we drove for a bit and took a quick kayak tour of cathedral cove. It was really neat because there were a lot of different fish in this one area that we stopped at. The cove itself had really awesome white sandstone cliff features. Kayaking was quite cool as we again had a great guide and got to ride the waves quite a bit. We then we drove to Auckland, got one last taste of Burger Fuel and went to our airb&b.
Cathedral Cove is so impressive! You guys find the best of the best! Not sure about the pool dig…how do you balance a cool drink and a shovel?!! Sounds like an awesome NZ adventure! Hardly a picture without smiles!!