The North Island, pt. I

The Journey

As excited as I was about this trip to New Zealand, I was a little nervous about how long this journey would take.  I've managed to get through 12.5 hour flights when I was flying to and from Jordan, but every time - without fail - I would be jumping out of my skin by 11 hours.  So with a 14+ hour flight from Los Angeles to Sydney, I wasn't sure I'd make it through in one piece...

4 am, May 8th.  We got up, loaded up our bags and drove out to the airport (thank you, Bill!) to catch our 6am flight to JFK.  Then came a 10 hour layover.  It was bearable though, because MasterCard was doing this promotional thing in our terminal, and you could get free internet and a comfy chair if you had one of their cards.  Score!  And to top it off, the space shuttle was temporarily parked on top of an airplane there, so we got to see it up close as we taxied on the runway.  It was awesome.

So then we got on our flight to LA, which wasn't bad, and hung out for another hour.  By the time we boarded our flight to Sydney, we had been up for almost 24 hours and we were running on hardly any sleep.   It was rough.  So rough in fact, that I couldn't even stay awake for dinner.  I fell asleep multiple times while eating, and they finally took it away while I slept.  The flight itself wasn't actually that bad.  It was long, but honestly not as rough as some of my flights to the Middle East.  So we touched down in Sydney, having crossed the international date line, on May 10th.  We got on our last plane to Auckland, picked up the rental car, and headed off to find our first hotel.

Auckland

The first challenge: driving.  They drive on the other side of the road here, which was really confusing.  Jeff was doing all the driving, and I would be doing all the navigating.  Simple, right?  Nope.  No gps, no data plans, and only minimal maps meant we were stopping at McDonald's to load map directions (or take pictures of them) in order to get from place to place, and hoping we didn't get lost.  Our first night we stayed at this little place called Oakwood Manor.

 I got us lost going there from the airport - I was too busy oohing and ahhing at all the scenery and didn't pay attention to the distances on the map - but we found it pretty easily on the way back.  We found a local grocery store, and tried New Zealand's famous L&P (it's a lemony fizzy drink made locally), and of course, had Subway for dinner.  Instead of American cheese, they had "Old English" cheese - it didn't quite taste the same.  Early the next morning, we grabbed breakfast at McDonald's - we stopped here frequently for internet to load driving directions - and then headed off on our 4 day tour of the North Island (and a bunch of LOTR filming locations).

To Rotorua

First we would be heading to Port Waikato to see Weathertop.   It was actually on private land, so we couldn’t get to the exact location.  But we were trying to get as close as possible, and ended up parked in some guy's farm, quickly turning around to backtrack as the owner's looked dubiously at us.  We stopped at the closest point in the road, got out and took a few pictures, but we were a bit disappointed that we couldn't really find it.  Fortunately, we were headed for Matamata next, home of Hobbiton.  We stopped along the way at this small café called the Black Beagle Café, and had coffee, steak pies, and a fresh out of the oven blueberry muffin - yum! 

Back on the road, we came to the end of our directions to Hobbiton, but there was no Hobbiton, just fields.  So we kept driving until we saw this little house by the side of the road, pulled in the driveway, and I ran to the door to ask for directions.  The couple looked pretty surprised, but said we weren't far and explained how to get there.  We finally arrived about 10 minutes before the tour left. 

Hobbiton was probably one of the coolest things about the trip.  It looked exactly like it did in the movies!  We were lucky - for years after LOTR was filmed, it was just a bunch of holes in the ground.  But because the Hobbit would also be filmed there, they rebuilt the place and decided to leave it intact this time.  We saw Sam's house, the ol' Gaffer's house, Bag End, the Green Dragon (from across the lake, they're doing some work on it to make it safe for customers to come through), the Party Tree, and even got to go in one of the hobbit holes.  It was so much fun!

After Hobbiton, we set off for Rotorua, where we would be couch-surfing for the first time.  We stayed with this really sweet girl, Klee, who is a high school teacher.  She had actually spent some time in the States before, so it was fun talking with her about her experiences there.   That night, we went out for dinner at an Indian restaurant (Jeff said he hadn't really had Indian before), and it was delicious!  We went to bed early, still jet-lagged, and the next morning, got a massive breakfast at the Fat Dog and headed off to find the natural hot springs.  Klee was kind enough to tell us how to get to a local place that was free and had a hot and cold river running into each other, so you could move up or down the pools to find a comfortable temperature.  They were awesome!  It was a cool, sunny morning, so you could see the steam rising off of the water, and even though it smelled a bit sulfur-y, it was wonderfully relaxing. We were surrounded by trees, only a couple people around (who mostly kept to themselves), and quiet - only the birds and the whispering of the wind through the trees to keep us company.

Coming up: off to Taupo, Turangi, and Wellington!