There and Back Again

Where to begin?

Well, Paul's parents came over to New Zealand to visit (or to have an awesome vacation in the country where their relatives happen to live as well:-p).  We saw Milford Sound again, Glowworms, acted as Southland tour guides, and then we took some time off as well and finally visited THE NORTH ISLAND.

Things are a little different on the North Island.  Instead of just kind of wandering around and finding beautiful things to look at, like we spend much of our time doing here, you tend to have to pay to see things, up North.  Beautiful things.  Things worth seeing.  But expensive things. 

We started out our trek, catching up to Paul's parent who drove our car all the way up the South Island and took the ferry across the straight.  We flew up the next day and met in Wellington.  Wellington is a city full of art and culture, famous for its interesting architecture and sculpture.  As well as being the capital of New Zealand (no, Auckland is not the capital), it is definitely the cultural center of the country as well, complete with a burgeoning film industry.  Our first stop in Wellington was Cuba street, which despite its name is a center of hippie-dom.  We hit the jackpot, finding street musicians and other dread-locked individuals.  Mmmmm...granola.  But the true reason we stayed in this city, was for the LORD OF THE RINGS tour.  Yay!


We started our tour off by mounting Aragorn...oh, I mean we got into a van called Aragorn.  Freudian slip on Paul's part there...awkward...  Anywho, Nathan, was our trusty tour guide, who, in his own mind, was a famous movie star (he was a background WARRIOR elf who held a flag in the Two Towers...and he held it straight!  Or so he says [don't see any Nathan in the credits]).  Anywho...he did know a lot of LOTR's trivia, which was cool.  We first went for a view of Wellington from Mt. Victoria.  Nothing to do with LOTR, but a cool view of the city, which is kind of like if San Francisco was the size of Grand Rapids.  We saw Miramar Pennisula, which is the Hollywood of New Zealand, where Weta Studio and Peter Jackson and so on and so forth are.  We next travelled to Mt Victoria park...a small strip of trees that runs through a section of the city...where a surprisingly large number of forest scene were shot, including the one where the hobbits find mushrooms and have to hide from the black rider on several occasions in the first movie (the famous scene of the 4 hobbits all huddled under the roots of a tree).  From there we travelled to a variety of different locations in the Wellington-area, including Rivendell (a park outside Wellington), Helm's Deep/Minas Tirith (a local stone quarry), and Isengard (another local park).  Best of all...pictures with elf ears on!  Bring on the dorkfest!  Hehehe.  The tour was worthwhile because most of the scene would take a lot of imagination to recreate on your own.  Peter Jackson used a lot of CGI and layering of scenes (Rivendell was also shot in Milford Sound to get background waterfalls).

After dorking it out, we went further North to our homebase for the next week in Turangi.  From here, we headed out for a broad variety of daytrips.

Our first venture out was to Taupo, a tourist trap a little North of Turangi.  After appropriately shelling out money for everything, we were able to "walk on the moon" at Craters of the Moon, a geothermal wonderland (one of many...), visit Lava Glass Gallery to look at  beautiful but VERY expensive glass art and eat AWESOME chocolate brownies (the first of many brownies to be eaten there), see Huka Falls (Huka means foamy, and Huka falls was a mass of blue bubbling magic), and visit the Huka Honey Hive where Manuka Honey (oddly believed by many New Zealanders to have nearly magical properties) is sold by the gallons.  Awesome. 

The true highlight of the day, however, was Wairakei Terrances for a traditional Maori experience.  Paul thought that this would probably be fairly cheesy, as these things tend to go, but he was very wrong.  First off, a chief was nominated from our group to represent our international tribe...it was Paul's dad.  Chief Bill was to lead us into the Maori village, answering their challange, making speeches on our behalf, and hopefully avoiding us being massacred and eaten.  He also had to dance, in front of everybody.  LOL!  Joking aside, this was a very informative experience with people who genuinely seemed to want to introduce us to their culture, which is rich and beautiful.  We had a tradtional hangi feast, which involved foods cooked under a large pile of earth and wood.  Zhiling thought it was delicious.  They entertained and educated us while we ate, even performing the war haka, which was pretty impressive.  Chief Bill also had to perform this, which was...not as impressive.  But, it was effective, as we nearly all died of laughter.  Good effort though...better than we could have done.  We would definitely recommend this particular tour to anyone. 

We had a subsequent cultural experience down the road at Te Puia in Rotorua, which had another beautiful geothermal area, but was a pretty standard cultural lecture.  On the plus side, Te Puia has Kiwis!  Though we weren't allowed to take pictures (as we weren't allowed to of any captive kiwis, as they are nocturnal).  We did get to see the wood carving school and weaving school, which were pretty cool. 

A little further away than Rotorua, we went to Matamata, which is better known as Hobbiton.  This is town where Peter Jackson turned a local farm into a genuine hobbit village.  It was AWESOME.  The farm itself was originally picked because of the well-placed tree near a pond, now famous as the Party Tree.  It also had the advantage of lacking any cityviews in a 360 degree radius.  The attention to detail was astounding  There were loads of oversized vegetables - purposefully grown to make the hobbits look smaller, miniture chimneys attached to hilltops, well-worn roads, mold made of sawdust and yogurt to make the fences look old, and even an entirely fake oak tree planted on top of Bag End to fit Tolkien's exact description of the house.  However, you can't see it, as we had to sign a legal document stating that we would not post pictures until at least 2013 after the second of the Hobbit films comes out, as it is still being used as a movie set.  If we did show you pictures, Peter Jackson would lock us in a New Zealand jail.   Zhiling has depicted Paul as a hobbit to the right.  The tour was definitely worth it and we apparently came at just the right time.  Prior to this year, the tour had consisted of looking at the hills with some plywood sets and images to show "what it looked like".  However, with the new films in production, it was exactly the same as the movie...and should be staying that way.  We also came at the perfect time that day as there were only about 10 people on the whole tour!

From there, we actually did some more of what we would typically do on the South Island, we found nature walks.  Tongariro Park was just down the road, and we spent the day tromping about the park that surrounds Mt. Doom.  It was a day full of waterfalls (Taranaki, Tawhai, Waitonga).  We trekked quite far to get back to Waitonga, and on arriving there to a beautiful waterfall, Paul's dad spent all his time taking pictures of a 10-15 foot tall like falls off to the side (seen to the left)...odd behavior.  He thought it was the most beautiful waterfall he had ever seen, even the pinnacle of his New Zealand experience...very odd behavior.  It was alright...

We subsequently returned to Huka Falls, this time by boat.  It was, once again, a mass of blue bubbling magic, but by boat this time.  We went with a river cruise, while Jetboats screamed by us, ignoring the beautiful wild life (birds) in favor of a rollercoaster experience.  WE saw the kingfishers and black swans:-)  Just a side note...black swans are actually hunted in New Zealand, as they are a pest with no natural predators there.  Hmmm.

On our final day on the North Island we returned to Wellington after stopping on the road on the way to look at sheepskin rugs and such.  In Wellington, we made our way to Miramar Pennisula where we got to encounter the magical mystery that is Weta Caves.  This is a small museum and store showcasing many movie props and novelties, including from such films as: LOTR's, Avatar, Tin Tin, Meet the Feebles (awesome), District 9, The Frighteners, The Narnia series, King Kong, The Last Samurai, etc..  (that's right, New Zealand is going to eventually displace Hollywood).  There were several lifesize models, including Lurtz, Gollum, and Sauron's armour.  There were also a broad variety of exquisite art collectibles made by the original artists.  Cool.

We finally left the North Island and returned to the better island;-)  We may be biased.

We decided to drive down the West Coast, as we hadn't previously been there.  We arrived in the Greymouth late Sunday evening, after Paul made his parents ill by driving quickly around a curvy road though the mountains.  The West Coast remains largely unexplored by us, as we didn't have a lot of time, but we did get to go to Hokitika to peruse the jade stores, and wander out to the Hokitika Gorge to see brilliant blue waters (somewhat clouded by the masses of sandflies).  As well, we visited the National Kiwi Centre, to see some kiwis in action...or more like sleeping.  But besides kiwis, there are also a lot of other cool creatures there, like Axolotls, Wetas, Lobsters, Turtles, and a giant pool of Longfin Eels, up to 100 years old and scary long.  We got to feed them...people.  not really, but we did get to feed strips of beef to them and watch them swarm towards the feeding hand.  Gross.

We also went North along the coastal drive to Punakaiki to see the "pancake rocks", an interesting geologic formation in limestone that is very thinly layered and not quite explainable.  And on the way home, we briefly stopped to see Franz Josef Glacier, which was pretty cool.  We'll be back (the Wild Foods Festival is coming up next month...).

Despite what Paul's parents say, Paul and Zhiling did NOT get sick of them:-)  Though the beef content of our diet did rise dramatically during their stay.  We've eaten nothing but vegetables since they left and we're still constipated:-)
















New Zealand Travel Tip #9: Even white guys can do the Haka (people just die of laughter instead of fear...sorry Dad).