The Shire

This is the last post on New Zealand but let me tell you: I saved the best for last! Welcome to....Hobbiton!

It may sound ridiculous but the moment we decided to add New Zealand to our itinerary, I knew I had to visit this place. I am not even a huge LOTR fan but I just love the hobbits, love Elijah Wood's character and love their insanely romantic and idyllic home town.

The entire village has been preserved after filming Lord of the Rings and has been extended when they started filming The Hobbit in 2011, which will be released at the end of this year I think. You'll find it in Matamata, two hours driving from Auckland and it sits on private property. After filming, the land owners started to negotiate with Peter Jackson and convinced him not to destroy the set and allow them to organize guided tours on their farm land. These guys must be really rich by now because they charge 66NZD per person, which is around 45 Euro, for a one hour guided tour through Hobbiton! Although I guess that also the town of Matamata and maybe the movie makers themselves benefit of this entry price? 

Anyhow we didn't let it spoil our hobbit day because it was a beautiful spring day after all with blue skies, birds chirping in the trees, sheep bleating from the rolling hills that were all around; it just couldn't be more perfect!

There are 44 hobbit holes in the town and not one is like the other. Every little house, or front because there is no house behind the door, has its own details like flowers, post boxes, windows, wind vanes.... Some of them have benches, others have tiny cart wheels or beehives that make their hole a little cuter than the neighbor's. It's just incredible how things like that have been taken care of and you can spend hours discovering props in Hobbiton. 

I was also very surprised about the size of the set, it really is quite big and one hour is just enough to walk through it. There is the lake and the party tree next to it that is just monstruous and also the main reason why the film maker has chosen this location. Behind the lake, there is the Green Dragon pub which will soon be open to the public and will serve them the 1% alcohol hobbit beer. Such a pity we came too early for that! 

I took more than 200 pictures that day, that's how much I enjoyed visiting Hobbiton! If only Benoit had dressed up as Frodo, as I told him to, we'd even had cooler pictures. (guys and their ego sometimes, tss...) I really had a hard time selecting for the blog but I hope these pictures make you smile like I do when I'm looking at them again (and again)!

This tree on top of Bilbo Baggins' house has an extraordinary story: it wasn't there originally, the film makers found it somewhere else and planted it here. The leaves are imported from Taiwan and are all, individually, wired around the branches. There are millions of them! Unfortunately, the leaves didn't adapt very well to NZ climate and started to turn blue after a while so they all had to be sprayed green again. Today, they are still green but if you look closer, it's a very weird, unnatural kind of green.

Fluo rocks and mud pools

After the post on Christchurch and Tongariro, you might have started to suspect that the earth in New Zealand isn't particularly sleepy. In fact, there are about 15'000 earth quakes per year (most of them are hardly felt but some can be very strong and damaging), there are also 50 volcanoes and many moving glaciers. Another example is the town of Rotorua, not far from Auckland. It's one of the top destinations in NZ, thanks to its incredibly active surface. There are geysers, mud pools, hot pools, hot rocks, steam coming from out of nowhere and all that. I guess they all have their official or scientific names but let's just say that there is plenty of fascinating stuff coming out of the earth in Rotorua. It is also the center of Maori culture and if you want to visit the fascinating stuff, you need a Maori guide to accompany you which is useful, as some of these phenomena are quite dangerous, and interesting at the same time because they'll tell you more about their life and culture. One thing you'll have to keep in mind when you want to visit Rotorua is that it smells!! Because of the sulphur, you won't be able to escape the overpowering rotten egg smell that is just everywhere, even inside hotels, restaurants, the tourist information office...We camped on the car park of a hostel when we visited and even when we went inside to cook or take a shower, the sulphur odor wouldn't leave us alone! Our guide took this quite positively though: as long as it smells in Rotorua, she is sure to have a job:-)

Tongariro

Today I'll show you some pictures of the Tongariro National Park, in the center of the North Island. You might be fed up with so many landscape pictures right now, but it's what New Zealand is all about: national parks. And it has to be said: Kiwi's really look after their natural heritage. The Department of Conservation (DOC) must employ thousands of people because every town of considerable size has its own DOC site that is responsible for the closest national park. All walking trails are in impeccable state, so you won't ever get lost when you go hiking (or tramping as they call it in NZ), there are plenty of shelters in the parks and toilets (and sometimes showers) at the entrance are always super clean. 

Tongariro NP is one of the oldest national parks in the world and is home to three active volcanoes Ruapehu, Ngaruhoe and Tongariro. Pretty cool names, no? They are of Maori origin and here in New Zealand, there are numerous places with beautiful sounding names, some being real tongue twisters. We camped in a place called Totaranui, you can go skiing at the slopes in Whakapapa or Wanaka, there is Thurangaomoana, Kihikihi, Kiriwhakapapa, Ruakokoputuna,....and so on!

Back to Tongariro now. Two of these volcanoes Ruapehu and Ngaruhoe were used to represent Mount Doom in Lord of the Rings. They have been combined, one of the reasons being the fact that the top of Ngaruhoe (in the first and last picture) is sacred to Maori and they didn't allow Peter Jackson to film it.

Cook Strait

Cook Strait is the passage between the North and South Island. It takes a ridiculously expensive three hour ferry ride to cross the Strait and apparently the waters are quite dangerous too because several boats haven't made it to the other side in the course of history. Luckily, I only heard about this last fact after our trip. For us, these three hours were more than enjoyable, with absolutely gorgeous weather, smooth sea and unspoiled views. If it weren't for its price tag, I'd take that ferry over and over again.

Abel Tasman

    Hello Spring! So happy to finally welcome you in Abel Tasman National Park! 

Fiordland

Fiordland is in the south west of New Zealand's South Island and pretty much every guide, travel site or  Kiwi will tell you it's a highlight.

After the hamburger experience in Queensway, we drove to Te Anau, the gateway to Fiordland. We arrived late in the evening and found ourselves a good and cosy camping in front of the lake. When we woke up the next morning, it was colder than usual and everything was covered in snow. Very beautiful but oh so uncomfortable when your house is a tiny camper van. We learned that the main road to the fiords had been closed due to a massive avalanche that night and there was no way we could go and explore the fiord of fiords: Milford Sound. At Milford Sound, steep cliffs are jutting out of dark water, with the most spectacular of all, Mitre Peak, rising vertically over more than 1600 meter.

More snow was expected in the coming days but we stayed optimistic and bought a ticket for a 'cruise' at Milford. But no luck the next morning, roads remained sealed off and we shuffled from the village's coffee house to the local library and back. Exactly what we did the day after that. And the day after. Traveling can be sooo exciting sometimes:-) Luckily we were able to transfer our boat tickets to the day the roads would open again. In the mean time we started to feel quite at home at Te Anau Lakeside Holiday Park, we occupied three fridge shelves, had our clothes drying in the lounge room and monopolized the tv remote control. We also made some friends but none of them stayed as long as us. Of course we were rewarded for our wait and got to see Milford Sound on a super cold but snow free day and even though a cruise isn't the ideal thing to do on a winter's day, it was a very rewarding boat trip.

A kea on the parking, looking for  tourists to feed him!

Milford Sound

Milford Sound: Mitre Peak

Milford Sound

Milford Sound