Having a self-contained vehicle is essential here, you can’t “free park” unless your van clearly shows this and our budget really needs a few low spend days at this stage! We free parked in a car park in Wellington, which is probably one of the more unpleasant things we have had to do so far. This is where the porter-potty came in useful. It was not an enjoyable activity for either of us. But when it's 2am and it's pissing it down and you need a wee, you find yourself grateful. The best thing about Wellington was the Garage Project brewery, we visited the Te Papa Museum too, but it’s fairly missable. Our friend James, a New Zealander who basically wrote out our itinerary for us, told us about the Tongariro crossing and the more we read about it, the more we knew we had to give it a go. Its a seven hour day walk that takes you up, over and around a volcano, its red crater and a couple of emerald lakes. There is a shuttle bus that most accommodations put on to take you to the start and pick you up at the end, sadly, due to the weather, the shuttles were cancelled and the tourist office were advising against the ascent. So we decided to give it a go anyway because we hadn't come all this way for a little rain and 90kph wind to put us off. We are SO glad we did it. The climb was a hard one but we were rewarded by some of the MOST incredible views we have ever seen. Incidentally, it is also the set of Mordor (from Lord of the Rings) so you can imagine how rough and bleak the landscape is. The walk begins through fairly flat and grassy terrain, then the ascent starts and the landscape quickly changes again to become craggy black rocks. It then kind of plateaus into what I can only describe as Mars before the final and steepest climb to the edge of the crater. But I’m not gonna lie, if our parents had seen the scree covered ridge we were crawling along in wind that really could have blown us off, I think they’d of had small heart attacks! It was indeed gnarly at the top and for the majority was a total white-out but every twenty minutes or so, the clouds would part and the views would take your breath away. It's hard to put it into words so here are some photos instead. The deluge continued as we journeyed to Rotorua. This is day three of non-stop torrential rain and we are getting pretty sick of it. Ohinemutu is a living Maori village on the shores of Lake Rotorua. This is the face of Tama-te-Kapua, captain of the Te Arawa canoe which came to New Zealand from Polynesia in about 1350. He and his brother were forced to leave Polynesia because they stole some breadfruit from a tree that belonged to another chief. Their descendants still occupy the village today. Rotorua is ridiculously touristy and it was a confusing ordeal trying to work out which tourist trap we should give our hard earned cash to to catch a glimpse of the bubbling hot pools and squirting geysers. We discovered that Te Puia is the most expensive of them all but apparently has the best food. In the end, we went for Whakarewarewa Village, foolishly paid for the cringe-worthy tour and performance, and narrowly missed the worst of the torrential downpours. I guess it was good to see but it was one of the more expensive touristy things we have done and I am sure our lives wouldn't have felt like something was missing if we’d missed it out… We discovered that you can actually just walk into the village and dodge paying the fee as no one checks, but also found out that the money goes back into the village whereas at Te Puia, it all goes to the government. And none of the food is worth it anyway, its advertised as being steamed/cooked in the ground/hot water but in actual fact, it is cooked in the canteen next door and its all just one big performance for the flocks of Chinese tourists. The redwood forest outside Rotorua was amazing and one of the benefits of the heavy rain meant that we basically had it to ourselves. Hobbiton, the land of the hobbits. What a magical place. I basically want to live there. I love small things, I find anything in miniature form ridiculously cute so it was basically a can’t miss for me. Undoubtedly the most expensive touristy thing we have done so far but no regrets. Matamata, the closest town to Hobbiton, is famed for its rolling green hills. Peter Jackson, the director of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films, was location scouting from a helicopter when he found Alexander Farm and immediately knew it was the perfect setting for Hobbiton. The rolling green hills made ideal hobbit homes, there were some large impressive oak trees and enough flat land to build the camp that would become home for the team during filming. The father and owner when first approached, didn’t have the foggiest what these ‘ring’ books were about but signed the contract after his son gave him a boot under the table. They lucked out and its been a cash cow ever since. After the filming of Lord of the Rings finished, they dismantled everything and then rebuilt it all again for The Hobbit a few years later, at which point they decided to build permanent structures, thus preserving the magic forever. The attention to detail is phenomenal, there is even a fake tree up on the hill and it's so well made you can hardly tell it's any different to the others. The leaves were flown in from Taiwan, painstakingly attached individually, but when Peter Jackson saw it he decided they weren't green enough and had all 200,000 individually hand painted. The paths through the village were created by one of the crew walking the same track every single day for a month so that they had that ‘lived in’ look for the aerial shots. The work that goes in to still maintaining it is amazing, the veggie patch alone is a full time job! Our tour guide was good too, after wandering round for a couple hours you end up at The Green Dragon pub for a pint of cider which was really something else!
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AuthorsRob & Charlie's travelling adventures on their long journey back to London after living in Hong Kong. Four continents, twelve countries, lots of experiences. Archives
July 2017
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Robert Ware & Charlotte Nunn |