After our morning dip in the hot springs, we dried off and got back in the car, ready for a new day of adventures.
To Taupo
Unfortunately, this was the part of the trip when Jeff got sick. We had stopped at the pharmacy earlier that morning to pick up some Sudafed, but because of a crackdown in NZ on the active ingredients (thank you, meth-heads), it was more like Tylenol. But Jeff was great about it, and the only real indication of illness was the rolls of toilet paper we kept in the car for runny noses... Anyways. So we drove off to Taupo, checked into the hostel - which was really nice - took showers, and then decided to go see Huka Falls. Before we got to the falls, we stopped at a honey store, which was doing honey and mead tastings. So we went in, and it was really cool - loads of different types and flavors of locally made honey. Then we tried the mead (my first time), and finished off with a brandy that had honey in it. It was like a hot toddy all by itself! It was warm and sweet and of course, expensive. But we enjoyed the tasting!
The waterfall wasn't all that tall (only about 35 ft), but it had this stunning blue color. I found that a lot of places had this crystal clear color there, but in this case, the color had a lot to do with all the air bubbles.
After the falls, we drove back to Taupo, and found that the McDonald's there had an airplane next to it. Not only that, but you could actually go eat in said airplane. It was pretty sweet! Then we walked to dinner and turned in for an early night.
To Turangi
After a good night's sleep, we hit the road, on our way to Tongariro National Park. We decided to stop at the hostel first and check in. This hostel, however, was far different from the YHA we had just stayed at. It was this little privately owned place, run by a small family. The place was pretty eclectic - colorful paintings everywhere, a big fire in the living room where a bunch of the guests were gathered to watch films and play board games, and one of the first things we got was a seat next to the fire and cups of mint tea from the owner. He insisted that we sit and warm up a bit, and then showed us to our room and around the hostel.
After a little while, Jeff and I got in the car and headed off to see Mt Tongariro and Mt Nguahoe (which I've probably spelled horribly wrong), where the Mordor scenes were filmed. Unfortunately for us, the weather was
terrible, and we could hardly see 10 feet in front of us. Even with that, however, we could tell that this was the perfect landscape for Mordor.
After a while we drove back, picked up some soup for dinner, and watched a few films before heading to bed. We had a long day ahead of us.
To Wellington
We got up early and headed to Burger King for breakfast and to use their internet to download our next set of driving directions. We would be taking the scenic route down to Wellington, stopping at LOTR sites along the way. We drove through more storms, windy routes, up and down hills, through mountainsides... Basically, a recipe for guaranteed car-sickness. Umph. But after many long hours in the car (much longer than anticipated...) we reached our first location - Fernside, home to lovely gardens used to film parts of Lothlorien and the fishing on the lake scene with Smeagol and Deagol.
We passed it by accident, but got directions from a local and found it quickly. The driveway was gorgeous - about a mile long, lined with silver trees with yellow leaves, sheep grazing by the side. Once we got to the house however, we found that technically, it was also private land and therefore we were not allowed on it without a tour, arranged ahead of time, of course. We were really disappointed, but then saw an open area of gardens outside the walls. So we walked on over, and quickly found ourselves surrounded by chickens and peacocks.
The gardener found us not long afterwards and told us it was off limits, so we left. At this point, it was starting to get dark, so we were a little worried that we wouldn't be able to see any of the other sites along the way. But we kept trucking, and found ourselves going down this huge valley with crazy winding roads, and random construction stopping traffic without signs around blind corners. Good stuff.
We stumbled upon a set of gardens while looking for a park, which were really pretty and fun to walk through, and then entered the actual park, destination: Rivendell. We only had about 15 minutes until closing time, so we rushed to find it, accidentally stopping at the wrong place first, but then finally we arrived at the grassy opening. There wasn't much there besides trees and grass, but the trees were familiar.
At this point, it was almost dark, and we still had at least an hour until we reached Wellington. So we packed it in, left the park and started to make some calls to hostels in Wellington to find accommodations for the night. We found a place in the heart of the city called Rosemere's - a former brothel turned into a backpacker's. We got a double room, went out for some dinner (at a Middle Eastern place - even got to speak Arabic with some of the folks!), then packed it in for another early night.
Coming Up: We drive from Wellington up to Auckland for our last few days on the North Island!
