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.

---

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

New Zealand 2010: Rotorua (Monday, February 15)

Written in the room in Rotorua, at 11:20 pm on Tuesday, February 16

After breakfast, we went into Rotorua to do some local sightseeing.  First thing, we stopped at the Visitor’s Center and booked the evening at one of the three local Māori cultural experiences.  Mom chose Te Pō, mostly because it includes visiting a local geyser.

In the gift shop, I tried on some flip-flops — I forgot sandals at home — but they didn’t fit comfortably.  I also checked out scarves, since a friend asked for one; they are part wool, part possum fur.  (The New Zealand “possum” is not the same as the American “opossum”.  It is an import from Australia, intended for fur farming, and far cuter than the American ones, but apparently quite the nasty pest in New Zealand.)  I also saw another one of the “anal leakage” stuffed kiwis.

We then went to Government Gardens and the Rotorua Museum of Art and History, which was originally a famous bath house (as in mineral baths, pumped in from local hot springs).  They had exhibits on the baths, on the Māori battalion in World War II, on Māori carvings and architecture, and one on couture from two former Miss New Zealands hailing from Rotorua (mostly on Linda Ritchie).  The building is being expanded, so a couple exhibit halls were unavailable.

Toward the end, we decided to sit through the 20-minute film presentation on the geothermal history of Rotorua.  It had a little Māori legend and then the lead-up to the 1886 Mt. Tarawera eruption, at which point the theater seats all started to rumble and quake.  Very memorable (and I was starting to fade off, so it was good!).

We stopped for groceries – including hokey pokey ice cream (butter brickle, I think) and golden kiwifruit (since the green ones they had weren’t even from New Zealand) – and hurried back to the resort, only to find the bus to Te Pō (which is done at Te Puia) waiting for us.  We quickly put the groceries away and got on the bus.  Over the next hour, they stopped at several other hotels and took us to Te Puia for the evening entertainment.

They started by demonstrating the approach to a Māori site, with several half-clad “warriors” doing some ritual activities.  Inside, we were treated to some Māori songs and dances, and they taught some of the women the “poi dance” (twirling a weight on a string) and some of the men the “haka” (how to be Māori mean, fierce, and ugly – crouching, slapping thighs, and sticking out the tongue).  After that, we had a large dinner, including shrimp, mussels, and oysters; roast pork, chicken, lamb, kumara (sweet potato), and pumpkin; and several dessert options (including one I later realized was the New Zealand dessert Pavlova).  (Urp.  I ate too much.)

After dinner, we rode a tram to the Prince of Wales Feathers and Pohutu geysers (the former is named because it has three feathery spurts, like the crest of the Price), which erupts 2-3 times an hour.  They referred to the site as the only two “living” geysers in the Southern Hemisphere, but I don’t know what they mean by that.  (I’m told there may be some exaggeration in the stuff we were told there; this might turn out to be some of it.)

Then came the long bus ride back, with us the last ones off.

Māori language has proven to be interesting.  It obviously sets of lots of “Hawai’ian” triggers in the head, but also a lot of “Japanese” seems to come through.  Too much Japanese, as I often stress the wrong syllables of the words.  (I also turn the double vowels into European-style dipthongs.)

---

Updated on March 12, 2010

Added links.
Added travel map.

Updated on April 1, 2010

Changed travel map to a live one.

Updated on June 3, 2010
 

New Zealand 2010: Auckland to Rotorua (Sunday, February 14)

Written in the room in Rotorua, 10:58 pm on Tuesday, February 16

After breakfast, we packed and checked out, left our bags at the hotel desk, and caught the shuttle back to the airport to get our rental car for the rest of the trip.  Mom had done all the driving when we went to Ireland, but she’s letting me do much of it on this trip.

Aiee!  Left side of the road!

It has proven a bit difficult to get used to driving on the left side of the road.  Without really realizing it before, I now see that I track the left side of the lane when driving an American car, so I started off doing the same here in New Zealand.  But from the opposite side of the car, that is hard to judge, so I kept drifting onto the shoulder.  (Two days later, I’m getting much better.  I did once lapse into right side driving, but quickly fixed myself.)

The other oddity with this driving is that the wiper and signal controls are switched from where I’m used to (opposite sides of the steering column), so every time I try to signal, I turn on the wipers instead.  (Fortunately, it is being drippy in Rotorua, so that’s less of a problem than it might be.)

Before leaving Auckland, we had kebabs at Kebabs on Queen, and drinks from a local “dairy” (the local name for a convenience store).  I had a Frank brand Tangy Blood Orange soda; it doesn’t taste any different from a regular orange soda.  We then caught coffee from The Coffee Club.

We drove south from Auckland about 90 minutes to Hamilton, switched drivers, and then another hour-plus east to Rotorua.  Rotorua is on a crater lake, the second largest lake on the North Island.  In the 1800s, it was home to the Pink and White Terraces, fabulous calcite pools formed by the geothermal activity; one mention we saw referred to them as the 8th Wonder of the World, but lots of things dubbed themselves that.  The Terraces were destroyed in 1886 by a massive eruption that killed 120 people nearby.

We are staying at the Marama Resort, a Worldmark timeshare property.  It is actually on the far side of the lake from Rotorua, about a 15-20 minute drive; it is closer to the village of Mourea.  I drove into Rotorua that evening, just to scope things out.

Internet access is only available at the registration office.  They have WiFi, but I have to hang out over by the closed-at-night office, either on their stoop or in a parked car. Annoying.

---

Updated on March 11, 2010

Added links.
Added travel map.

Updated on April 2, 2010

Changed travel map to a live one.

Updated on May 18, 2010
 

New Zealand 2010: Auckland (Saturday, February 13)

Written in the room in Rotorua, 10:21 pm on Monday, February 15

After breakfast, we walked down to the waterfront.  We passed a huge cargo ship from Singapore which we had seen from the room and took for a ferry because cars were unloading from it.  Further up the waterfront, we passed the ferry building and the Queen Victoria cruise ship, and Voyager, the New Zealand Maritime Museum.

After walking through a waterfront restaurant complex, we walked the half-mile or so to the Sky Tower.  This is a 1000 foot high communication tower and tourist attraction (cf. Space Needle, Stratosphere, and CN Tower, all of which I’ve been up in).  The Sky Tower is about 300 feet taller than the Space Needle, but I still like the Space Needle better, both for its style and the fact that Seattle development has stayed away from the Needle, making it look more impressive as a result.

To get to the ticket booth, we had to walk through the huge gift shop.  (Actually, first we had to find the entrance.  We went up to the third floor of the SKYCITY complex, to where the Deck bar has a connector to a bar in the Sky Tower’s base.  Only then did we find out that the entrance to the tower was from a down escalator on the Sky City ground floor.)

The gift shop was full of all the usual New Zealand and Sky Tower knickknacks that you would expect.  Most disgusting souvenir (other than the “Kiwi Poo” and “Squashed Possums” chocolates) was a stuffed kiwi that is reversible into a pillow via a zippered compartment.  With the pillow pulled out, the poor kiwi looks like it is suffering from a horribly prolapsed rectum, like all its insides are leaking out.

We visited both viewing levels of the Sky Tower, then went to the café for some coffee and sweets.

Trekking back to the hotel, I crashed for a nap and Mom watched some of the Olympics opening ceremonies.  She also took a walk to find us somewhere for dinner, which turned out to be a pub.  I had a tasty steak, mushroom, and cheese pie.

After dinner, we watched abbreviated reruns of some of the opening ceremonies.  A short commercial for the Little House on the Prairie DVDs ran multiple times, sometimes twice in a single commercial break.

I headed out to Urge again, and then to Lateshift.  After leaving there, rather than a cab, I walked back (between 1.5 and 2 miles).  Along the way, I stopped for a lamb kebab (pronounced “keh-bab” rather than “kuh-bob”), as had been recommended to me.  In the States, this is a gyro; in Canada, it’s donair.  It seems to be the standard late night food throughout New Zealand, although the McDonald’s and Burger King on Queen Street were also open at that hour.  (Also recommended were the meat pies at a gas station near Urge; I didn’t get to try one of those specific pies, but I did have such a pie on the way to Christchurch.)

---

Updated on March 10, 2010

Added links.
Added travel map.

Updated on April 2, 2010

Linked travel map to a live one (because I can't get it to be a direct live one).

Updated on May 18, 2010

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

Updated on June 11, 2010

Figured out how to get a live map that shows the routes; needed to use addresses rather than business names.

New Zealand 2010: Sydney to Auckland, and Auckland (Friday, February 12)

Written in the hotel in Auckland, 9:34 pm on Saturday, February 13

Emirates Air was a fine flight.  The meal I had was chicken korma.  The bathroom has some nice design touches, including wood veneer and bottles of eau de toilet and hand lotion.  I watched the film Julie & Julia, but I only got halfway through before we started our descent (and they grabbed all the headphones a good 30 minutes before landing), so I’ll hopefully catch the second half on the return to Sydney.

Customs wasn’t too bad of a wait, although they had a checkbox for offensive of restricted materials, which included sexual stuff on computer or DVD.  I happen to have a porn video with me, albeit an old one which doesn’t want to play any more, so I declared it.  Then I had to stand there next to my mother and tell the guy that I had gay porn with me.  What they really wanted was illegal stuff, in terms of kids or animals, and this wasn’t that, so he cleared it.  We then had to go through biosecurity, where they want to know about plant and animal materials — nuts, fruits, wooden items (like native masks), etc. — because they want to protect New Zealand’s unique flora and fauna.  I had a nut and cranberry mix I bought at LAX, but that was no problem.

After changing money at the airport — I disposed of a Danish bill left from last summer in the process — we took the shuttle bus to the city, to a couple blocks from the hotel.  The Oaks Residences is on the edge of the city’s financial district, near the bay, but the neighborhood itself is only middling, with a massage parlor and an apparent strip club (the Mons Venus) within a block.

Our room is a corner room on the 17th floor, with a nice view of downtown and the bay from one side and of the Sky Tower from the other.  It has two bedrooms, a living room, one bathroom, and a kitchenette.

We relaxed a bit, and then headed out to the Smiley Market on the corner to get groceries — streaky bacon and eggs, coffee, yogurt, bread and margarine and jam.  By staying in a room with a kitchenette so we can do this, we save at least one meal a day.  We went out to a Japanese restaurant (Kyoto) around the corner for dinner.  Mom had her first green tea ice cream.

The temperature is in the low 70s, highs and lows just a few degrees apart — about like Seattle in June or early July – but the humidity is pretty high.  The hotel doesn’t have air conditioning, so we’ll depend on open doors and air off the ocean.  (On the 17th floor, we’re not too worried about intruders.)

Coming back to the hotel, Mom crashed on the couch and I got ready to go out to a local bear/leather bar called Urge.  I woke her up before I left.

I caught a cab to Urge.  Midway through my first beer, I heard “Jim?  What are you doing here?”  It was Bryan, a guy I used to know in the Bay Area; he is now the partner of Grant, who works at Urge and whom I met in Seattle a year or two ago.  I was also expecting to meet some buddies from Seattle who are on an Atlantis cruise from Sydney to New Zealand, but the dates I had been told were off by a few days; they won’t hit Auckland until Monday, but I think they’ll be in Wellington when I’m there next weekend.

After Urge, I went to a club called Lateshift, and then back to the hotel.

---

Updated on March 8, 2010

Added links and travel map.

Updated on April 1, 2010

Changed travel map to a live one.

Updated on June 1, 2010

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

New Zealand 2010: Seattle to Sydney (Wednesday, February 10 & Friday, February 12)

Written in the terminal at Sydney airport, 7:40 am (Sydney time) on Friday, February 12

Wednesday started with finishing off my packing and calling in for a work meeting, which ended up being cancelled.  As I was waiting on the line, Tuesday night’s episode of Lost started downloading, with a projected finish time of 10:35 am, just after when I wanted to leave.  Being the Lost slut that I am, I waited for it to finish downloading and then transferred it to the iPhone to take with me — which took me until 11:01 am, so I had to scramble out the door to get to the light rail station.

I think this is the lightest I have packed for a trip in ages; I pack heavier than this for a weekend country-western dance event.  That’s mostly because I’m travelling with my mother.  Although we arranged to be in the cities on the weekends, so I’ll mange to get out to experience some gay life in New Zealand, I only packed a vest and boots and jock for my leather gear.  It will have to do.  There’s only one leather-ish bar in New Zealand, anyway: Urge in Auckland.

Once on light rail, I called into my second meeting, which we ended just as I got to the terminal at the airport, so it was well timed.  I expect to get a new build or two of the Android version of our software e-mailed to me while I’m here, to do some spot checking. I shouldn’t be able to play music due to international “geoblocking”; (we only play in the U.S.), but I should be able to install and explore the app outside of that.

I flew Virgin America to Los Angeles, with a nice rate of $99 each way, cheaper than other options.  But as a small airline, they have limited flights (just 8 cities at this time, I think), so I had to leave at 12:45 pm, leaving me with a 5 hours layover at LAX.  Mom’s Alaska flight left about the time I arrived, so she had less wait.

Virgin America is tied to Virgin Atlantic and V Australia and Virgin Blue and all that, but not tightly enough to be considered foreign owned (per a recent lawsuit).  They also aren’t tied closely enough for me to get credit for my flights to Australia and New Zealand on their plan.  And they couldn’t check my bag straight through to New Zealand, either (which is odd, since Mom could via Alaska).

The plane had purple lighting in the ceiling, which I think was meant to be calming and such, but made it feel like a nightclub to me.  (Specifically like the defunct Seattle gay bar Manray, whose decor was white wall panels with pastel lighting behind them.)  Each seat had an entertainment center in it, but the movies and TV shows were pay-per-view, and $8 for a movie was too much.  It also had games, but they weren’t especially well done, and one in particular hung my console once and then the controls wouldn’t activate one of the commands.  So I mostly read (the DC Showcase Presents Booster Gold volume) and did crossword puzzles.  The flight to LAX was quite bumpy.

At LAX, I had to get my back and then re-check it on V Australia.  The crew at ticketing was friendly and engaging.  After I checked my bag, I came back to ask about miles and found that they have Delta as a partner, so I was able to get my 17,500 miles or so for this trip credited, which should give me enough for a free flight there, since my Ireland and Amsterdam/Copenhagen/Berlin flights were on Northwest and Delta as well.

Food choices at LAX were piss poor.  The “Food Court” was Burger King and Starbucks, plus a sit-down fish place, and the Burger King prices were $2-3 higher than a regular BK would charge.  Yow.

While waiting for Mom to arrive, I worked on some blog posts.  After she got there, we found a spot with power plugs and I watched an episode of Desperate Housewives Season 3 (thank you, Netflix).

On the V Australia flight — which had gray ceiling lights, a little less like a night club than Virgin America, but which had a bar between first class and business which restored that impression some — Mom and I were separated by an aisle (I had arranged this at V Australia check-in).  The entertainment systems were better than on V America, with a bundle of free movie selections.  (I watched Up, Zombieland, and 500 Days of Summer — all are recommended — and played Zuma.)

They feed you well enough on international flights.  Even though we left after 8 pm, they fed us dinner (I had Japanese curry chicken with bok choy) and breakfast in the morning (I had cream cheese and apricot crêpes). As well, they have a snack area in economy where you can get chips, cookies, cheese and crackers, and water throughout the flight.  Great idea.

Despite V Australia advertising that they have power plugs at every seat (I think; can’t find the reference now), they don’t.  Economy coach gets screwed, so I didn’t use the laptop during the flight.  But with the movie selection, I didn’t need to.  (And of course, this was an almost 14-hour flight, over night.  I did get about 7 hours of sleep, or sort of sleep — the sort you go in and out of as you try to pretend to get comfortable and hope no one passes by and bumps you.  Maybe 5 hours of real sleep.  Maybe I’ll doze some more on the flight to New Zealand.)

On the V Australia flights to and from Sydney, there was a dedicated women’s lavatory in the Economy section, something I had never encountered before.  I’m not sure if it was there as a privacy concession (a woman-only space), a perceived cleanliness issue (no pee dribbles on the floor, but I routinely hear that women make bigger overall messes of public toilets), or just an awareness that women take longer in the toilet than men do and may need extra facilities (go to a concert or sporting event some time and see the long, long line for the women’s toilet).  Regardless, I did use the women’s toilet once, before they announced that it was women-only and where it was.  (It didn’t look any different on the inside.)  I never particularly noticed it getting used more than others.

According to this article, this gender-specific feature is apparently a new idea.  The article doesn’t mention any other airlines having it, even though V Australia does.

We crossed both the Equator and the International Date Line last night.  My first time for each.  So we’ve swapped seasons to high summer and skipped almost a full day.

At the Sydney airport, I cashed a €20 bill I had left from last summer to get some Australian spending money, and bought a horribly overpriced bottle of water (AU$3.90) for Mom and a latte for myself (priced closer to what you’d expect in an American airport, AU$4.45).  And then I sat and wrote this blog entry.

We’ll be boarding in a few minutes, flying Emirates Air to Auckland.  Based out of Dubai, it’s apparently a two-floor Airbus 380 plane.  I’ve never been on one before, so this may be cool.  The flight to Auckland is about 3 hours and a time zone change.

---

Updated on March 5, 2010

Added links and made a few revisions.
Added a chunk on airplane lavatories.

Updated on March 8, 2010

Added travel map.

Updated on April 1, 2010

Changed travel map to a live one.

New Zealand 2010: Before the Trip

Written in the terminal at LAX, about 4:00 pm Wednesday, February 10

Several months ago, my mother asked me to accompany her on her next overseas trip, to New Zealand.  (She had previously taken me and her mother to Ireland in February 2008.)  I said yes, of course!  She was willing to take my boyfriend as well — he’s big into tiki,  so he would have really loved the trip — but he decided he couldn't go due to ex-wife and teenage son issues.

We slotted out our schedule to spend the first weekend in Auckland (the largest city, on the north end of the North Island), then weekdays in Rotorua in the center of the North Island, the second weekend in Wellington (the capitol, on the south end of the North Island), and then catch a sea ferry to the South Island and Christchurch.  I would return from Christchurch and she would spend a few more days on the South Island.  (I didn’t want to take more than that amount of time away from work and eating up vacation.)

Via a buddy on the gay cruise site Recon, I got in contact with a guy who does travel arrangements for numerous hotels throughout New Zealand, with the company EasyStay New Zealand.  He helped me make arrangements for our hotels in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch, while Mom dealt with Rotorua and the airfare from Los Angeles.  We will be flying V Australia (one of Richard Branson’s Virgin properties) to Sydney (almost 14 hours), a layover there, and then another 3 hours to Auckland.  Add in my 2 hour flight to LAX and 5 hours there before leaving for Sydney and you have a very, very long trip.

One of my Christmas presents (via an Amazon gift card) is a DVD player for my Aspire One netbook.  It will allow me to watch movies without needing to bring along the additional DVD player.  That much less weight to tote around!

A couple weeks after we made the air travel plans, the company I work for started work to spin-off the division I’m in into its own company.  Naturally, the official announcement of that came the day before I leave, so I’m apt to miss out on some of the details while I’m gone.  I’ll have some net access while I’m gone to keep up with things, I hope.  (It also means adventures in vacation time, since I’m actually going in a hole a little for this trip due to a mix-up they made after the Ireland trip and only fixed in December, 18+ months later, which removed 7 days of vacation time from my account.  Crap!)

---

Updated on March 3, 2010

Links added.