New Zealand 2010: Rotorua to Wellington (Friday, February 19)

Written on the ferry to Picton (on the South Island), 11:00 am on Sunday, February 21; and some at Los Angeles airport at 5:15 pm on Monday, February 22

This was our big long travel day, about 9.5 hours from Rotorua to Wellington.

We left Rotorua a bit before noon and headed south to Taupo.  Mom needed to change some more US currency, and there was a CD shop I wanted to visit that had been closed when I got back from the kayaking the day before.  In the early 1990s, I had an Internet friend in New Zealand who I met because of a mutual love for Days of Our Lives.  She would send me New Zealand music, including several tapes and CDs from The Warratahs (a country group), and I would send her Calvin & Hobbes collections.  The Warratahs broke up around that time (I’m told), and I’ve always wanted to finish off my collection.  A buddy visiting New Zealand around 1997 picked up their last album for me, but it got ripped off from him in a hostel he was staying at.

Yay!  In the New Zealand music section, they had an 18-track Best Of collection, including several songs from that missing album.  I also bought a Welcome to New Zealand album, a Kiwi Country album (with two Warratahs tracks and one from lead singer Barry Saunders), and a John Denver collection (hey, I’ve only got one song from him in my DJ music!).  The store owner said he was partly responsible for that Warratahs collection being produced: he kept getting requests for Warratahs disks, so he phoned them up (the band, the record company.  I don’t know) and got them to put it out.  We also chatted about American country music for him to stock, and I turned him on to Randy Houser.  To hear him describe it, his distributor is baffled by why he would carry any American country music, much less order dozens of units of various artists.

(He also reminded me that New Zealand does have one famous country singer in its output: Keith Urban.)

(Woo!  I checked out Wikipedia and saw that The Warratahs did re-form and have released two further albums this decade.  Must find!)

We had ice cream cones — I had passionfruit (which they leave the seeds in, oddly), something you never see as ice cream in the States.  The primary ice cream company in New Zealand is Tip Top, and their stuff is indeed fantastic!

I also stopped in at a thrift store we spotted two days before, just so I could tell my boyfriend that I had done so. (Sorry, hon, nothing of interest for sale.)

Next stop was Turangi at the south end of the lake, for gas.  Then we headed down the west side of Tongoriro National Park, home of the three volcanoes (Tongoriro, Ngauruhoe, and Ruapehu), which were given to the country by a Māori chief in 1887.  (The cynic in me wonders if that was magnanimous or an effort to keep them out of the hands of mining companies and the like.)

We stopped for pictures a couple times and at Chateau Tongoriro at the skiing town of Whakapapa, the main entrance to the park.  The Chateau was used as headquarters for the Lord of the Rings crew when filming the Mordor sequences, many of which were done in the park.

(Māori pronunciation: “wh” is pronounced as an aspirated “f” or “fh”, so there is a t-shirt out there that I didn’t see which says “Whakapapa – Your momma did”.  Also, a leading “ng” on words has the “g” almost silent; I think you press the tip of the tongue slightly into the soft palate at the top of your mouth, maybe 1/4" back from where an “n” sound is made.)

We continued down to Wanganui, on the southwest coast.  I slept for about an hour through very windy road; probably good so I didn’t use my phantom passenger foot brake on every curve as Mom drove.  (You know the one, I’m sure.  You use it whenever someone else drives.)  Heading south along the coast, we stopped for snacks somewhere outside Palmerston North (Otago, maybe?).  I got a bag of Bluebird-brand (with a penguin on the bag) “Rashuns”.  On the bag, they looked like Fritos, but inside, they were closer to Cheetos, but “cheese and bacon” flavor and truly foul!

At Foxton, we stopped for dinner at the “66 on 1” American-style diner, and then proceeded to Wellington, where we stayed at the Comfort Inn on Cuba Street.  This turned out to be a block from one of the two gay bars (S & M’s; not a leather bar!) and near a major pedestrian shopping area.  That night, I also tramped up to Dixon Street, which was incredibly loud and full of 20-something drunk straight kids.

New Zealand has sported more motorcycles and scooters than any place I’ve seen, including the good numbers we have in Seattle and even last summer in Europe.  I’ve been incredibly homesick for my own scooter (but in weather like we’ve had here in New Zealand, whether that’s slightly drizzly or super sunny), and envious of the guys (and girls) we’ve seen riding.  New Zealand is unquestionably well suited to riding.  My scooter could have easily handled anything we encountered in the Auckland/Rotorua/Taupo area, although it probably would have struggled with the hills south of Turangi.  I would love to come back in a couple years with my boyfriend and rent motorcycles for our transportation through the country.

We’ve also seen a lot of “Backpackers” hotels/hostels on the North Island.  Daniel, from the Lake Taupo kayaking trip, was one of them: they apparently do most of their travelling by bus (or train), staying in these cheap, small hotels along the way.  They are mostly under 25.  It sounds like a great way to encounter the country for someone of that age, someone less tied to luggage and laptops.  But maybe it could be good for motorcycle tourists, too.

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Updated on March 1, 2010

Updated on April 12, 2010

General updates and spelling corrections.
Added links.
Added travel map

Updated on June 7, 2010

Moved part of this post to the Sounds Kinky-er blog:
http://soundskinkyer.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-zealand-2010-rotorua-to-wellington.html

New Zealand 2010: Hobbiton, Bay of Plenty, and Rotorua (Tuesday, February 16)

Written in the car on the way to Lake Taupo, 3:39 pm (and finished in Rotorua at 8:42 pm) on Wednesday, February 17

We headed north toward Matamata, to go to the filming site of Hobbiton used for The Lord of the Rings (and the upcoming pair of Hobbit films).  Rather than take the Hobbiton bus to and from Matamata, we drove right to the Shire’s Rest café, where we had coffee and fries while waiting to start the tour.

The tour involves a short van ride into the middle of the Alexander sheep farm.  The remnants of the Hobbit holes constructed for The Lord of the Rings films are still here.  Most are maintained just against the elements, as apparently they can’t keep them decorated like in the movie due to copyright laws.  But you get a guided tour around the sites and can walk into the undecorated interior of Bag End (just one small plywood room; the rest was sets in Wellington).  The Party Tree is real and there, but the old oak tree above Bag End was faked up for the film.

The same site will be used for the upcoming two-part Hobbit films.  They’ve fenced off a couple areas to let the grasses grow away from the sheep, but I don’t think filming will be for another year, since they will presumably do similar gardening setups months before filming like last time.

The guide told us stories about LOTR-themed weddings, people in costume and speaking Elvish, and even one 6'6" “Hobbit” who had to be escorted away from where he pronounced “home”.  I like The Lord of the Rings, but I sometimes forget just how extreme people can be when they are really “fans”.

Given that The Hobbit is shorter than any of the three LOTR books — it might be longer than The Two Towers — it’s hard to imagine why they are doing two films for it.  Okay, it’s easy to imagine why: money.  I would guess that (a) the break point will be after the fight with the wargs after escaping the Misty Mountains (I first thought that the halls of the Elven King in Mirkwood would be better, but the escape from the wargs is more a turning point for Bilbo), (b) they will will each be under 2 hours, and (c) they will add in some of the supplemental stuff that occurred at that time of The Hobbit but was revealed in LOTR, like the council of wizards with Saruman and Radagast.

As a souvenir, I picked up Ian Brodie’s The Lord of the Rings Location Guide, which is a roughly north-to-south tour through the 100 or so locations used for filming the The Lord of the Rings films.  Mom had picked up an abridged version in Auckland, but this has at least more pics; I don’t know what else is different.  My copy is also signed by the author.  (Several days later, I’ve realized one big thing that is missing from this: maps.  The inside covers should have maps of both New Zealand and Middle Earth, with numbered callouts corresponding to pages in the book.  That way, you could either trace your way through New Zealand, or you could follow through the books/movies and reference the location info.  That seems like a huge and obvious lapse to me.)

After Hobbiton, we headed up to Tauranga and Mt. Maunganui.  It took us forever to wend our way through the town, but we eventually got to the beach and saw the base of Mt. Maunganui.  Unfortunately, the weather was misty and foggy, so while we saw some surfers in the water, we didn’t get a good view of the South Pacific.  Driving back through the Bay of Plenty region, we saw lots of kiwifruit orchards, which we initially took for grapes and then hops, before realizing what they must be.

Each region (equivalent to state or county?) of New Zealand seems to have their own road signs promoting safe driving.  In Bay of Plenty, they have kiwifruit with eyes and wheels; near Rotorua, they are morepork owls, with slogans like “nvr txt nd drv” and “Feeling sleepy?  Take a break.” Of note, these are just about the only billboards we saw the entire trip (I recall seeing one regular advertising billboard near Seddon on the South Island); compare to around any city or town in the States.

We also didn’t see any American-style “rest stops”, nor any European-style “traveler’s rests” (which have bathroom facilities and usually some fast food).

We wanted to have dinner in a coastal town, but all we found was fish and chips takeaway, so we ended up back in Rotorua at a restaurant called Capers.  I had a chicken appetizers platters and Mom had lamb and apricot kebabs (this time, meat and fruit on a skewer, rather than a gyro-lik sandwich), sharing with one another and both of us had about 1/3 left over.  We’ll be having chicken and lamb omelettes for breakfast!  (New Zealand language quirk: their menus say “Entrees”, which we read as “main dish” but they mean “appetizer”, as in the entry into your meal.)

Back at the room, I went researching the adventure caving opportunities in Waitomo.  The first ones I looked at required 48 hours advanced reservation, so they were out.  I would love to do one of the Lost World trips – 4 or 7 hour ones – but even with the 10% online booking discount, they are in the $280-350 range (and they heavily discourage eyeglasses).  They look really cool, though, including long ateliers (rappelling), squeezing through crevices, and getting into underground rivers.  Whine.

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Updated on March 15, 2010

Added links.
Added travel map.

Updated on April 2, 2010

Changed travel map to a live one.

Updated on June 4, 2010

Moved part of this post to the Sounds Kinky-er blog:
http://soundskinkyer.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-zealand-2010-hobbiton-bay-of-plenty.html