NZ Day 9: New Plymouth to Rotorua

This was a really fun day with two very cool tours that we did en route to Rotorua.

We woke up to somewhat wilder weather with heavy rain and strong winds, so it was good that this wasn’t a hiking day! MacDonalds was next to our hotel and convenient for a quick brekkie before hitting the road and it worked well, with their McMuffins the same as anywhere else, but their coffee syrups too sweet.

We took our time doing the 2.5 hr drive to Waitomo, the first half following the coast and the second half cutting through gorges. The travel and rain did not make it conducive to lots of photos.

The rain peaked as we arrived at the Waitomo glow worm caves and we there were rivers running through the car park. Our stiff legs from yesterday meant that we weren’t running anywhere!

There was a cool canopy over the area we checked in at and waited.

The tour itself was very cool. It was the first tour for our new guide, and he was very shy. That might not be the best quality for a tour guide, but the walk through the caves was still great, and he sung a Māori song very well to demonstrate the acoustics of the cathedral cave. At the end of the walkthrough, we took a short boat ride where we had to be silent, and the roof was covered in the worms, each of which has up to twenty stringy things hanging below it to catch insects that they reel in with their prey. No photos were allowed until we exited the cave, back into the pouring rain.

We grabbed lunch in Otorohanga before carrying on to what we’d been waiting for – the Hobbiton tour!

It was well organized with buses taking groups of forty and their guide to the film set where you walk around forty four hobbit holes. On the bus, they showed some introductory clips from Peter Jackson and the landowner, and some pertinent clips from the films. The set for the Lord of the Rings was built in 1998 with temporary materials (like polystyrene), and degraded. When preparing to film The Hobbit trilogy, they agreed with the land owner to build with more permanent materials, to set it up as a more permanent attraction. They have about 2000 visitors each day.

It was all such fun walking around and imagining them filming. The hobbit holes were of different sizes, with bigger ones to make hobbit actors look smaller, and smaller ones to make Gandalf look bigger. Only the outdoor scenes were filmed here, with most of the inside filming done at Pinewood Studios outside London.

Earlier this month, they opened a new “behind the door” exhibit, where they have created and fitted out the inside of two hobbit houses. While there is no link to anything in the films, they built and finished the homes extremely well, about 80% regular size. They were not the hole of Bilbo or any of the main film characters, allowing them more artistic freedom.

We finished off at The Green Dragon Inn before heading back to the visitor centre and our car, though delayed by droves of sheep. The surrounding areas are still very active farms.

Our Hobbiton visit had been 2.5 hours and such fun, but we were tired. We made it to our accommodation in Rotorua and grabbed groceries and a quick Taco Bell for dinner! I wa particularly tired and had an early start with Samuel the following day for our dive, but Samuel and Bailey enjoyed watching the first half of the Fellowship of the Ring.

This page is part of our New Zealand trip set of posts