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!

 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/Db1JxYTINd3/?img_index=1

Type 8 traversing Notable Stellar Phenomenon

 

Flying my Type 8 through a deep red hued cloud with exobiological lifeforms at a Notable Stellar Phenomena in Elite Dangerous. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/Dbo0eirDrAf/?img_index=1

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:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DaVU2UIHKQZ/ & https://www.instagram.com/p/DaO8y6_OUUA/

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.

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.  

  

 

  

          

Some previous days in New Zealand: December 13, December 10, December 8 and December 4.

Exploring Auckland's Harbor and Newmarket Mall

Due to delayed travel plans, we had to reshuffle several major items on our schedule for our actual arrival in Auckland, NZ. Our Hobbiton Movie Set tour was pushed off to much later in the week. We also moved our harbor cruise to December 10.

First, Allie and I did a little shopping in the morning, confirmed our cruise tickets and then did a little more shopping. We found one tourist shop that was a sister shop to the one we visited in Queenstown, but it had shirts that had good designs and fit. For the first time on our trip, we actually bought some New Zealand themed t-shirts.

Afterwards, we lined up for the harbor cruise and boarded. The trip was a circuit around the Waitemata Harbour augmented with commentary on the various locations, including a bit of New Zealand history, facts about the islands and other interesting places to visit.

 

 

On returning to the CBD, we took a bus to Newmarket to shop at the Westfield Mall. We found some Japanese themed stores with a lot of cute anime items, of which we bought a few. We then found a store full of actual Japanese products, again buying some items that were actually needed during our trip. We also found some good options for dinner at the mall's food court, but chose a great broad noodle dish at a Thai fusion stand.

As the mall was closing, we purchased a couple more needed items from a bookstore, then headed to the bus line to return to the hotel. We did not want to stay out too late anyway since we had to get up early the next morning for a tour planned by Allie's cousin who has been living in New Zealand for most of her life.