New Zealand
I love, love this beautiful country. It is one of my favorites and one I would happily move to permanently if I could get citizenship. Alex and I visited Australia and New Zealand in 2005. We spent about 20 days on this trip but most was in Australia, with only five days on the South Island and two nights in Auckland. When Kelly and I were talking about travel in 2012, she couldn’t go in September/October like we usually do, so asked, is there a good location to visit in November? Yes. New Zealand! We spent two weeks driving around the South Island.
When my new friend and colleague, Leslie, asked about travel to New Zealand in 2013, I gave her recommendations and helped her plan the general itinerary but she decided she didn’t want to go alone and asked if I would join her. Twist my arm! Yes, definitely. We planned to visit both the North and South Islands.
Queenstown
We arrived on the 22 of November around 1300. After checking in, to Queenstown Nomad Backpackers, we just walked around this beautiful town and had dinner at Ferg Berger. We visited the Queenstown Gardens trail walking out onto the little peninsula over Lake Wakatipu. We had some post midnight fun when the fire alarm went off and we all had to go stand outside for about 40 minutes.
The next day we walked through the Artists’ Market and rummage sale at the nearby church. The priest was on the bullhorn encouraging people to spend their money. We had a full day free in Queenstown and had booked the Ziptrek Ecotour tour for this morning.
Charles from Virginia was one of the guides; he was in NZ on a Work Holiday visa and had just renewed it for a year, lucky guy. Connie was our other guide and was from NZ. We had a 3-hour, 6 zip lines, the last is the longest, steepest and fastest in the world with a 30 story drop over a kilometer. It included a 20 minute walk along the Tiki Trail on the aerial tree platforms. What a fun and exciting morning!
Milford Track
Like Kelly and I did in 2012, Leslie and I booked a tour with Ultimate Hikes. Kelly and I only had time for the Routeburn Track, 3 days/2 nights. But Leslie and I booked the Milford Track, 5 days/4 nights. We had our pre-hike briefing at 4:45 at their office in Queenstown.
Leaving most of our stuff in bag storage at the hotel, we packed smaller bags for our hike. We left the next morning at 0900 to drive to Te Anau. We had a boat ride across the lake to start of hike. We walked about a mile to our first lodge. Our guides were Kate, Katie, Amanda, and Jono. We took a nature walk, about 90 minutes, before dinner. Like last year, the meals were excellent. We had a choice of blue cod or venison with mashed potatoes and apple cobbler.
Leslie and I met a few of our fellow hikers that evening. There are about 40 people on the hike. About half are Americans (last year there were only 4 of us), there is one couple, from Japan, on a second anniversary trip, the rest are Australians and New Zealanders.
We met Mark (a retired 2-star Army general), his wife Patty and their friends, Corine and Eldon, all from Alaska. Daniel was from Wellington. The nerd in me was excited to learn he was an extra in the Hobbit, an elf guard who greets the dwarves in Rivendell. He told me that because of shooting in 3D, they couldn’t use perspective to manage the different heights of the characters like they did in LOTR, but had to shoot every scene twice with different sized doubles to portray the tall elves and shorter dwarves. All the actors were about 6 feet perhaps but their body doubles were either 5 feet, for a dwarf, or closer to 7 feet, for an elf. Daniel is finishing up his music degree in Scotland and starting an opera career in Europe. He was on the trek with his Mom, Claire.
The next morning we left at 0830 for Pomolona Lodge. Like last year, they provide a great hot breakfast buffet, lots to choose from. They also spread out a selection of sandwich fixings, trail mix, fruit, and other items to pack your lunch. We walked around 10 miles. It rained most of the day. The tall waterfalls were hidden by the clouds, which were very low. Jono had told us not to bother stopping for the little waterfalls as there were better ones later in the hike.
We walked across a huge avalanche path which had completely taken out the trail, covering it with massive boulders; the guides stayed on both sides urging extreme caution as it would have been very easy to just twist ankles, or worse, as we crossed the rocks. The rain also made it extremely slippery. Dinner was pasta or chicken breast with great stir-fry vegetables and crème brulee.
Our second day was a difficult one. We hiked up and over McKinnon Pass, 6 miles up and about 4 down. It was very cold and windy on top but the guides said it has been much much worse. Going down was just as tough, we had to watch every step and even then I came down once on my knee and hand because it was very rocky, very steep. There was an even worse part, a very, very steep ‘alternate route’ because the main track was covered in a rock slide. Jono met us with “hot” (lukewarm because of the weather) Milo (hot malt chocolate) in a thermos just before the summit. Dinner was ribeye or dory.
That evening I talked to some more of my fellow hikers, Richard and Eve (Melbourne, Australia), Bonnie and Josh (US), Andrea and Paul (Australia).
Our fourth day, the 27th, we walked 13 miles to Sandfly point. It was MOSTLY flat, but had enough up and down and rocks and roots to keep you looking down and not around unless you stopped. The entire group made the 1500 or 1600 boats across the late to Mitre Peak Lodge. Kate said that was the first time one of her groups made all the earlier boats, so good for us. 
The lodge is beautiful and offered amazing views. All their lodges have “washrooms” where you can rinse out clothes by hand with heated drying rooms to lay out clothes, but this lodge offered washers/dryers. I was one of the people on the 1500 boat, so grabbed a washer immediately. I knew it would be hard later and they were running all night.
Leslie made the 1600 boat, and when she arrived, we met up for a beer. There was a little ceremony where everyone received our completion certificates. We learned Mark had fallen about 10 feet off track onto his back. He was up and walking but looked in pain and they had him checked out for serious injury.
Thursday, the 28th, we had a beautiful morning for our Milford Sound cruise. Alex and I had visited Milford in 2005 but it was stormy and overcast. We had perfect weather, bright blue skies. Gorgeous. It was also American Thanksgiving. Bonnie and Josh had brought “Happy Thanksgiving” signs so all the Americans got pictures with them on the boat.
After the cruise we had a long bus ride back to Queenstown, arriving back mid-afternoon, around 1530. We literally dragged our plastic liner bags several blocks to the hotel. We did go out for another walk, this time up around the lake. For dinner, we had some Monteith’s beer and split several types of appetizers at Monty’s across the street.
Lake Tekapo and Mount Cook
Friday we made a late start. After picking up our rental car in Queenstown, we were on the road about 1030. We stopped at Arrowtown for a short self-guided tour. “Maggie” (our navigator, she was named by Leslie) led us on a closed road, down a dirt road in the wrong direction, and on the gravel “Tekapo Canal Road.” We did not get along with Maggie.
We made it to the beautiful Lake Tekapo around 1530. We stayed in another hostel, the YHA Lake Tekapo. We walked around town, even though it was misty and cold. We walked down to the lake and around the church (closed and locked). We made reservations for Mackenzie’s at 1900 and had great lamb shanks and black beer.
We had made reservations for Earth & Sky (now called Dark Sky Project) that evening, but stopped by their office to change reservation to next day. We knew it would be cancelled that night because of the weather. Glad we didn’t wait as it was pouring rain later. Kelly and I had tried to visit last year, and it also got cancelled, so when Leslie and I were planning our itinerary, we booked two nights just in case of bad weather.
The next morning was still rainy but we got up early and drove to Mount Cook/Aoraki. We did a couple walks in the rain. Then we had to search for gas as we hadn’t paid attention to the tank and so paid more at Mt Cook, but at least we found some. I was worried, we were very close to ‘E’.
We did the Tasman Glacier walk and saw the Blue Lakes, about 1 – 1 ½ hours, then toured the visitor center. After lunch we started Kea Point, but it was still raining, so didn’t finish. We drove back to Lake Tekapo, arriving around 1500. Before going back to the hotel we drove to Mount John to see the observatory. It cleared off, so we visited the Tekapo Springs hot pools for several hours. They have 3 hot pools, 36, 38 and 40 degrees Celcius overlooking the lake. Beautiful area. And it feels fabulous!
We made dinner at YHA, our hostel, with groceries we purchased earlier. It was too windy on the mountain for Earth & Sky to use the big telescopes, they can be damaged in high wind, but we had clear and beautiful skies. So they scheduled the alternate site at Cowan’s Observatory. It was a gorgeous site. The sky was full of stars, we saw the moons of Jupiter, Alpha Centauri, Orion’s sword, the Tarantula Cluster, and so much more. Their small, “portable” telescopes were still very powerful. We had a great guide, Andrew, who made the evening very interesting.
We left the next morning around 0900. We had about a 7 to 8 hour drive to Picton. En route to Picton we stopped at a lavender farm outside Kaikoura. We stayed in Sequoia Lodge for the night. After arriving we went down to the waterfront and did the 1 hour walk to Bob’s Bay. We picked up fish & chips for dinner to eat at our hostel.
Wellington
We did the beautiful Queen Charlotte Scenic Drive early before going to the ferry terminal. We had an 1100 reservation for the car ferry to Wellington. We had to have the car in line by 1000. It was going to be about a 3 1/2 hour trip. We picked up sandwiches for the trip. We spent an hour in the Marlborough Sound before reaching the Cook Strait between the islands and sailing into Wellington Harbor. We arrived around 1400. “Maggie” the navigator, was acting up again, and didn’t take us correctly. We were staying in XBase-Wellington downtown but entered the address on Cambridge Terrace. We were directed out of town to a suburb and had to stop for help at a gas station; thank you, Mike!
We finally found the hostel and checked in then found parking. We walked down to waterfront and saw the Civic Center. We found a little cafe and had some local Wellington beers (Tuatara and Moa), while enjoying the view. Walking around the square, we stopped in the i-site visitor center, used the internet, and picked up a good Wellington map. We visited the Te Papa Museum for about an hour before they closed @ 1800. We stopped in Queen’s Wharf, their waterfront boardwalk, then had 2 for 1 quesadillas for dinner. We saw the Embassy Theatre, where all of the LOTR movies premiered.
We got up early the next day, around 0700 and were soon on the walking tour “Middle of Middle Earth”, in search of Hobbits. We found all the marked locations from the guide (we think). Then we went to Weta Cave and purchased tickets to the Workshop for noon. So much fun and it was a very interesting guided tour learning about their miniatures, special effects, and makeup.
We went to lunch then Leslie and I did separate walks. She did some shopping then returned to the museum. I walked down to Old Saint Paul’s, Wellington Cathedral of Saint Paul’s (the new St Paul’s), the Beehive Parliament Building, the Library and Department of Defense. I went back to the museum for a few hours, too.
Later Leslie and I met Annie, another hiker from the Milford Track. Annie lives in Wellington and told us to call when we arrived. She took us on a ‘tiki’ or tour of the city. We did the Marine Drive scenic tour, visited the Strait for views of the south island. We climbed to the Massey Memorial (a former British PM) that had nice harbor views. We drove by the former LOTR cast hangout, the Chocolate Fish Café, but it had moved and was now a Scorch-o-Rama. We walked past Peter Jackson’s house but unfortunately he wasn’t home so I couldn’t tell him how much I love the LOTR movies; he was in LA for The Hobbit premiere. We drove past the huge Weta Green Screen and around the backs of the other Weta buildings we hadn’t seen on our earlier tour. We visited the Roxy theater, owned by Tanya Taylor, one of the Weta owners/founders, with husband Richard.
We were going to eat at the Mexican restaurant where Anne said all the LOTR stars ate but it was closed Mondays and Tuesdays. We drove by the house owned by Peter Jackson where Ian McKellan stayed. Annie told us that Jackson owns a number of houses in the area and loans to his casts. Finally, Annie took us to the Wellington airport to show us the new Weta exhibits. One was Gandalf on a giant eagle, the second was Gollum grabbing a fish. Annie took us to show us her house, then the surfing beach, Lyall Bay, where we saw a Moa statue given to NZ by the president of Chile. We ended our evening with a great dinner downtown at the Olive Café.
Tongariro National Park and Rotorua
Wednesday, December 4th, we left Wellington for Tongariro National Park. It was raining so we didn’t see much of Ruapehu or Ngaurohoe (AKA Mount Doom) but we walked to Mangarewa Falls where Gollum caught the fish in Two Towers. We visited the Tongariro National Park Visitor’s Center. There is an engraved rock in front of the visitor center where they buried artifacts from the 12 Maori tribes.
It was cloudy and rainy so we didn’t make other stops on the road to Rotorua. We saw cool ghostly looking moss-covered trees along our drive. Arriving around 1800 we checked into Leisure Inn (we booked the Rotorua Mercure so we had a bit of confusion about location, not “Maggie’s” fault this time). We had a great room and off street parking. We went downtown in the car and walked around but it was still raining off and on. We did some window shopped then had dinner at Hell’s Pizza. I had a ‘Mordor’ pizza, it was excellent!
The next day it was still raining. Regardless, we went to Redwood Forest and walked around for about 2 hours. It was beautiful. We also visited the Rotorua Museum. We stayed for a few hours, learning about the old terraces that were destroyed during a volcanic explosion in 1886, the hot baths, and many other great exhibits. We drove out to Buried village but it was closed. Back in town we had for Lamb Stew at Hennessy’s then used a visitor coupon for a free beer at the Pig & Whistle.
We stayed up rather late, so didn’t get out until 0930 or so. We drove out to Matamata but it started raining on the way. We decided to make reservations for next day, the first tour then went back to town. We visited the Buried Village, privately owned. It was mostly dug out by the family who owned the land after the volcano covered the area. They did have some archeologists help in some areas of the village. Very interesting.
We had lunch in town then I went to Hell’s Gate for a mud bath and sulfur bath. I loved it. Leslie wasn’t interested in the spa so stayed at our hotel to skype family. I was back before 1700 to clean up as we were getting picked up by Tamaki Māori Village for our Hangi dinner; it is now called Te Pa Tu.
We had a great Māori show and a good dinner. The shuttle driver sang “She’ll be coming round the mountain” while going around the roundabout 5x. She also knew the words to many national anthems, and led a karaoke sing-along.
Matamata and Hobbiton
We were up early to get to Matamata, AKA “Hobbiton” by 9:30. This is part of the Anderson sheep farm. We had a beautiful clear day and it was great being on the first tour. Most of our pictures were tourist-free. We had a great guide, Wyatt, and saw the lovely set. One of my favorite films so it was amazing being able to walk around the area, seeing the party tree, the bridge and many hobbit holes.
Some interesting facts:
• Hobbiton/Shire was built for LOTR. But it was dismantled. Later it was rebuilt to be permanent for Hobbit.
• The Anderson family had saved a number of the sets and were charging people for it. When rebuilt, Jackson agreed to make more permanent but had agreement to get $10 per ticket.
• We saw maybe 30 hobbit holes, about half built 30% scale.
• They had children dressed up like old hobbits for the small scale holes. Some were ‘smoking’ manuka honey and sawdust in their pipes.
• The original bridge was built of polystyrene and Ian McKellan had to ride in a cart over it for Fellowship of Ring. He didn’t think it was sturdy enough to hold him and cart and Elijah Wood (“Frodo”) so wanted his stunt-double to do it. The stunt guy also refused. Meanwhile the farmer was chasing his sheep, a few had gotten away from his dogs and were headed down to the set, so he was chasing them on his motorcycle. He came tearing down the hill and over the polystyrene bridge on his bike despite the set people trying to wave him off. After he went flying over the bridge, Ian McKellan decided to do his own scene.
• It took 8 months to build Hobbiton.
• The tree over Bilbo’s hole was a real tree in LOTR but had rotted by time Hobbit filmed. Jackson wanted exact tree so it was built from pictures by Weta Workshop at cost of $1.1 million.
• The leaves on the tree were wired on by hand by more college students. When it came time for filming the leaves had faded to wrong color, so college students again hired to take all the leaves off, paint them darker green and wire them back to tree, about 450,000 leaves.
• The lichen on the fence posts and throughout the set is just yogurt, sawdust and green food color. We were all invited to try some. It was very gritty.
• Each mailbox at each hobbit hole was painted to indicate the profession of the owner. Flowers for gardener, tools for wood worker, etc.
• Jackson found the location when scouting for the perfect “Party Tree’. The location was perfect, you could look in any direction and not see a road or house or pole. They filmed all the on-location Hobbiton scenes here instead of the 12 previous locations they had selected for various scenes.
• It already had a small pond but a few more artificial ponds were built.
• Jackson went up to farmers house and told him he wanted to film a major movie on his property. The farmer told him he was interrupting the All Black rugby game and to come back later.
• Jackson imported a pig from England instead of using a local New Zealand pig, “apparently our pigs don’t look British enough” said Wyatt.
• During drinking scenes in Hobbiton, Green Dragon and Bree, hobbits were getting drunk from all the takes (why not just use non-alcoholic beer?) and Jackson wanted real beer, so he bought share in Harrington’s, a local brewery, and they made the new “SoberRING Thought” beer, 1% alcohol.
What an excellent day! Hope my pictures turn out because Leslie’s good camera was not charged. She left her charged battery at hotel, unfortunately. We had time for some ale at the Green Dragon after the tour before catching the bus back to Shire’s Rest.
We had some great Thai for lunch in Rotorua town, then spent some time in the pool and hot tub at hotel. Leslie went down to Kuirau park for more pictures of the mud pools.
Coromandel Peninsula
Sunday, the 8th, we continued our trip driving to Coromandel Peninsula, staying in Whitianga. It was a longer drive than I anticipated, taking about 4 hours. We stopped for fish and chips for lunch. We checked into Turtle Cove and walked down to waterfront. We took the ferry to Ferry’s Landing then wandered through a cemetery and on to Front Beach and Flax Bay. We spent a great hour or two walking the beautiful beach and enjoying the sound of the ocean. It starting raining lightly as we were leaving.
We returned to hotel and asked about tides the next day. The owner told us low tide was in half an hour (1730) so we got our suits on and drove out to Hot Water Beach. It took a while to find a hole that had water that was not too cold, not too hot, “just right”, but then it was very enjoyable. We shared a hole with a couple from Australia, originally from Denmark, that was visiting NZ for a week. We left around 2000 and went on to Cathedral Cove but the signs said it was a 45 minute walk down and we didn’t think it was good or safe to do in the dark so we went back to Whitianga. We picked up some groceries at little convenience store and cooked them in the hostel.
The next morning we were on road by 0830. We drove back to Cathedral Cove and did the walk. Worth the steep climbs, it was very beautiful. It took about 2 hours all together. It started raining after we were headed up. We continued to Coromandel Town. We had a nice lunch, lamb burger for me and bangers and mash for Leslie, then did a little shopping.
There were not as many ‘art shops’ as expected from our reading. We found a Pa Lookout walk that took about 1 ½ hours though the Kauri trees. We had great views of the town and harbor. We wandered through a couple more craft shops, they had beautiful, but very expensive, items. We then went on to Thames where we both browsed several hours, then met back at the car at 1700 and headed back to Whitianga. I unfortunately missed the Mercury Bay Museum which closed at 1600. We had dinner at Wild Hogs and I had a couple beers at the hotel.
Auckland
We were up early to drive to Auckland. We had about a 3 hour drive, we arrived around 1100 and found Bamber House. No check in until 1400, and they wouldn’t let us check in early so we left our bags. We also left our car in the parking lot and took a bus downtown.
We saw the Ferry Building, Old Custom House, Albert Park, Queens Square, Aotea Square and Arena. This square had great Christmas trees built from recycled plastic bottles. We returned to hotel to check in and make sure we returned car on time, around 1500.
After dropping off the car, we walked back over Dominion Hill to catch a bus to hotel. Leslie was trying to meet her friend Phil but he didn’t have his car to meet her, so she just spent some time on the phone with him. Then we both walked to grocery store, I bought some Whitestone cheese to bring home. Leslie had seen a Hell’s Pizza earlier on bus ride back. We both loved the Hell’s pizza we had in Rotorua (twice!) so we were happy to see it, and we ordered it for delivery. Delicious. Again.
Our last day in town, we were leaving mid-afternoon. We had to keep an eye on the time but decided to spend our last day on a Waiheke Island tour. We took the 40 minute ferry ride, then had 1 ½ hour tour on island, and came right back. Waiheke means “cascading waters”. Lots of people live on the island and commute daily to downtown Auckland via ferry. There are beautiful and expensive houses here, 30 award-winning vineyards, and 60,000 olive trees. The olive oil also wins prizes. There is no real water supply so all the houses collect rain water via 5000 gallon tanks. We stopped at Onetangi Bay and spent some time enjoying the beautiful beach. We had both wanted lamb one last time so stopped in the i-site asking if they knew about a place and they recommended the Waterfront Cafe.
We took a cab to the airport around 1530 and were on our way home, a long, long flight to San Francisco, a short layover, then Chicago. After getting to our car we were greeted by flat tires, two of them! We ended up having to spend another night in Chicago to get tires the next morning. We wonder if we somehow angered the volcano gods? Brutal end to what was already 30+ hours of travel.