Savery Savory Mushrooms was a real company as this site, but now the only remaining structure is this water tower. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/Dbo8_RvjLfg/?img_index=1
Friday, August 14, 2026
Thursday, August 13, 2026
Adventure in Hobbiton
To travel to Hobbiton from Auckland requires a car rental or a tour bus, similar to our previous tour to Rotorua. My choice was the tour bus option. Unfortunately, the drive on the tour bus to Hobbiton was rather annoying due to another passenger who was a know-it-all that disrupted the tour guide's chatter with an endless series of inane questions (apparently, to which this person already knew most of the answers). Besides that, the Hobbiton tour itself was definitely a highlight of our New Zealand trip.
The day of our trip (December 13) was mostly sunny, which offered a spectacular backdrop for the tour. We got to see dozens of Hobbit homes. I love the Hobbit story, and the films, so this was a special treat. Many of the Hobbit homes were sized for forced perspective during filming, while many others were sized at nearly human scale for filming close-up shots with the actors.
We took a lot of photos. In some photos, we appeared slightly larger than a Hobbit would next to their home, but in other shots, we were giants. The Hobbiton tour guide was genuinely entertaining. He bared a striking similarity to David Tenet.
The amount of detail for each home exterior is amazing. Even more detail was present in the Hobbit home interior that we also toured.
After the Hobbiton tour and return to our transport back to Auckland, we had one additional stop at the reservoir on Waikato River. Unfortunately, the ride back to Auckland was with that same know-it-all, but overall, the adventure was great!
Monday, August 10, 2026
Type 8 traversing Notable Stellar Phenomenon
Sunday, August 09, 2026
Taking out the new Nomad to break it in
Video: Brand new in Elite Dangerous, my Nomad landed on the slop of a moon's crater with the casted shadow of a Caspian in the background! Music "Cloud View" by Matthew Lorono. Image: Exploring Sanguineous Rim.
Instagram:
Saturday, August 08, 2026
Auckland Zoo too
On December 12, Allie and I took mass transit over to Auckland Zoo. The Zoo has a lot of good exhibits with many animals. It's a small zoo, but well organized. We got to view lions, tigers, zebras, meerkats, lizards, eels and so many other critters. However, it was disappointing that so many of the exhibits for New Zealand native animals were either closed or had the animals unavailable.
Afterwards, we met up with Allie's cousin again for dinner at Lone Star in Alexandra Park.
Wednesday, July 29, 2026
Rotorua, New Zealand
Allie's cousin (who has lived in New Zealand most of her life) planned a day trip tour for us to Rotorua on December 11. This required a long three-hour bus ride from Auckland aboard a small tour bus. Along with others on the tour, each person had their own outing scheduled for the day once we arrived in town.
The first tourist to arrive at their destination was at the Māori Cultural Center. Everyone else was dropped off at Wai-O-Tapu Geothermal Park. We had enough time to see most of the geothermal attractions, but not everything. At the designated time, we met at and piled back into the bus. The next stop was back at the cultural center to pick up the one tourist and drop off a bunch of others.
The last tourist, Allie and I were then dropped off at the Polynesian Spa for geothermal baths. Meanwhile, Allie's cousin was taken to a Redwoods Forest Tour.
The geothermal paths were relaxing, but weirdly, the highlight was when Allie and I took our first-ever cool plunges.
Feeling relaxed after 2 hours, the bus picked us up from the spa (we were the last group). After a short stop at the lake, we headed back to Auckland.
The day was long, so we didn't plan anything for the evening.
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