Our drive from Taupo was a little old school in that our mobile wifi decided not to play ball. At all. We literally had to resort to dodgy maps and the fairly terse road signs located in New Zealand. Despite these hardships (we were practically tracking wild game for meals for crying out loud) we finally located Orakei Korako Geothermal Park. It is situated across a river from the entrance/cafe and consists of a number of geysers, a cave and about a million steps.
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| All set for the 90 second voyage. |
Once across the river, we had the place pretty much to ourselves (aside from one professional-looking photographer that kept racing on ahead as he saw the hordes descend (the hordes being us in this instance).
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| The Artists Palette |
The kids appeared to enjoy themselves, the belching cavities into the underworld weren't particularly odorous (relatively of course), and no one scalded anything of note - so we counted the outing as a success!
The next step on our adventure was the small town of Matamata, of note primarily as the jumping-off point for the Hobbiton Movie Set tour. We arrived ludicrously early and spotted what must clearly be the starting point for the tours (an information centre that was clearly straight off the set of a Peter Jackson movie), so contemplated filling in around 2-3 hours. On our tour around Matamata, we happened by a Vodafone store - so took the opportunity to check out what was happening with our mobile wifi. Turns out we (and I'm being generous here) burned through our planned month's usage in about 9 days. That would do it. We dutifully recharged and increased our download quota to hopefully contend with some teens with devices. After having lunch and even a romp around on a nearby playground, we made our way back to the information centre.
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| This is not the way to The Shire. |
The lady behind the counter calmly told us we had the wrong place entirely - the tours embark in a spot about a 20 minute drive out of town. A fairly frantic 15 minute drive later (got caught behind a tractor of all things at one stage), we got to Shire's Rest with approximately 5 minutes to spare.
Hobbiton Move Set is a fully guided tour (with fairly clearly set-out instructions/rules). The Martin kids were outraged by several clearly "disobedient" tour members, who strayed from the immediate area - and even (gulp) walked on the grass!
The place is Hobbiton in the flesh as it were, and included many well-known places from the films, including Bag End (home to Bilbo and his freeloading nephew Frodo), the party tree, as well as Samwise Gamgee's home.
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| The view from Bag End. |
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| Bag End. |
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| Sam's place. |
The tour ended at the Green Dragon Inn, where we were treated to a complementary beer (I opted for the stout, while the rest of the family went with the non-alcoholic ginger beer).
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| Me drinking beer with the kids. |
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| The view from the Green Dragon Inn. |
We popped into the gift shop briefly, where Jen stunned the Martin children by somehow missing the large DO NOT TOUCH sign affixed to the $900 Elven shawl on display, and set about handling it with abandon.
We were quickly ushered out of the Shire, and cruised down State Highway 29 - where a particularly enthusiastic driver (complete with a trailer laden with firewood) thought he might enter the T intersection with State Highway 1 - ducking in front of a semi-trailer. Fortunately the truck driver was coherent enough not to simply drive over the top of said enthusiast, and the way to Cambridge (our stop for the night) remained open. We've a delightful outlook over the BP service station and Supercheap Auto, with the sound of traffic negotiating a roundabout to cap things off nicely.
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