The Fellowship...

We left Wellington and decided to make our way up the west coast of the north island. My sister and her husband spent a year working and travelling in New Zealand in 2005-2006, so they had a ton of contacts for us. We decided to head out of Wellington and make our way to New Plymouth to visit their friends Craig and Toni and their kids Hunter and Jaimee.

Our first day driving up the west coast wasn't very eventful. We spent a few hours in the car just trying to cover some ground and make it close to New Plymouth. We did stop in a little town called Otaki for an hour or so because it had tons of outlet stores and I couldn't help myself. We ended up at the Kathmandu and the Icebreaker outlets. Dave and I both limited ourselves to one item, but man it was hard. Almost everything was 50% off or more and it was all so pretty!!!

From Otaki we found a place to stay. We decided to try our hand at freedom camping so we looked into a few different free campsites that had public toilets on site. We found one that was a little off the main road and it had a toilet so we were set. We made dinner and we were starting to get ready for bed when this random car pulled up. I didn't hear it, but out of nowhere Dave said he heard someone walking around outside of our van and sure enough we looked outside and there was a man roaming around. Dave got out and started to make conversation with him while he pretended to be getting water for us. The man said that his dog ran away in the area earlier in the day and he was just looking for her - a golden lab named Goldy. The fishy part was that he wasn't calling for her or whistling or anything dog like. We offered to take his number and call if we saw a dog roaming around but he said he was just going home quickly to pick up some stuff then he would be back to spend the night. He left and we were totally freaked out. Needless to say we decided to move our van. So, here it is close to midnight and we are trying to find a place to stay for the night. We did and we quickly went to sleep!

The next morning we woke up and made some friends with the other couple staying at the same site. They had sold their house and moved into this wicked bus that they converted to a campervan. It was massive and had these amazing real hardwood doors on the bus. We had breakfast with them and then we were on our way.

The rest of our day was spent driving the rest of the way to New Plymouth. We got to drive around Mt Taranki. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a cloudy day so we couldn't see the top, but it was pretty neat to see this flat landscape with this massive cone shaped mountain in the middle of it.

We made a few other stops at little towns and beaches along the way then ended up in New Plymouth with Craig, Toni, Hunter and Jaimee. They were such a sweet family and so nice to have us stay with them. We got to play with the kids a bit before bed (Dave was heavy into a cricket match with Hunter until he had to go to bed), then we had adult time and ate dinner and watched the Olympics. It was awesome!

Craig and Hunter

 

The next day was a Wednesday, so obviously everyone had to go to school and work. Dave and I had a bit of a lazy morning sleeping in and watching the Olympics. Then we made our way into town and did some shopping and sightseeing. We got to see this bridge that was built in 2008 and won Best Bridge award that same year. It is a nice bridge...it looks sort of like a wave and if you look from one end to the other on a nice clear day, it frames Mt Taranaki, which was pretty cool to see!

Our night pretty much consisted of the same thing - playing with the kids before bed, then dinner and Olympics afterwards. It was so awesome to get to know Craig and Toni. They were super nice and welcoming and we had a great time visiting.

The next morning we decided to head out of New Plymouth and continue our adventures in Matamata. We said our goodbye's over the breakfast table and then started our trek across the island. But first we had to check out Pukekura Park - something both Craig and Toni recommended we did before leaving town. We are really glad that they highly suggested it because it was awesome! It was this huge park right in the middle of the city that had so much to offer. It had this awesome cricket pitch with the stands build right into the grassy hillside that surrounds it. It had tons of ponds and walking tracks, waterfalls, a cafe, a stage (where Craig and Toni got married) and a fernery. The woman at the cafe suggested we stop by there. It was a beautiful greenhouse with so many ferns and flowers in it. Just gorgeous. We were sad we couldn't stay longer but Matamata awaited.

You see, Dave is a Lord of the Rings fan and they filmed quite a bit of those movies at a specific location in Matamata. Hobbiton, the Hobbit village in the movies, was filmed on a farm just outside the town. Originally, the sets were made of crappy materials because they were supposed to be torn down at the end of filming. But, because of bad weather, they never were. People in the area were watching the LOTR movie and noticed a familiar background in a 3 seconds clip and they were able to guess which farm it was filmed on, so they went knocking on the owners door. This started a massive tourism business for this family. When Peter Jackson started filming the Hobbit movie, they decided to tear down the old crappy set and build a brand new replica of Hobbiton with better materials that would last over time. They have now set up this tour business, that shuttles hundreds of people through in a day to see the set from the movie.

We managed to get ourselves on one of the first tours to leave the next day, which was an excellent idea because by the end of our tour there were so many people there it was crazy. It was actually a pretty cool thing to do. I am not a LOTR fan - I haven't seen all of the movies or read any of the books, but I still loved the tour. This town that they built was so real and lifelike - the hobbit holes, the Green Dragon bar, the party tree, etc. It was all so real! And to hear some of the hilarious stories from our guide. Like, they use a program called CGI for a lot of the effects in the movie - but apparently, making shadows is really difficult to do with the program so they made a huge fake tree out of individual leaves brought in from Taiwan and wired to a fake tree base to make a real tree shadow that was seen for 3 seconds in the film. The amount of money and detail they put into this franchise is unreal!!! The best part of the tour was getting to have a drink in the Green Dragon pub that they have remade to look exactly like the pub from the movie. We had a beer out of these great old steins and it was awesome. Such a cool day.

Bag End... No big deal

 

From Matamata we decided to make our way down to Taupo because the weekend was supposed to be beautiful and somewhere along the way I had agreed to go skydiving there....ahhhhh! On our way into town we checked out the Huka Falls. It was a little underwhelming because it isn't so much of a huge waterfall as it is a very powerful one. But it was neat to see none-the-less. Then we arrived in Taupo and I spent most of the day hoping that a huge storm would roll in the next day so I wouldn't have to be a chicken and backout. Unfortunately, we woke the next morning in our caravan park to clear blue skies and a gentle breeze - apparently the perfect weather to jump out of a plane and plunge to your death. I was absolutely terrified, but it was always something on my bucket list and now I had the opportunity to do it, so I did. They barely gave you any training - all they taught you before letting you jump out of an airplane (attached to a skydive master, of course) was to keep your head back, your legs bent and hang onto the harness when you are leaving the plane. That's it! Then they suited us up and off we went into the airplane.

Since this was going to be the one and only time I would ever be jumping out of an airplane I decided to get a video of it. My dive master, Marley, got to interview me along the way and he video taped a lot of the dive, which is hilarious to watch now. I swear like a sailor...such a potty mouth!! But seriously, the first instant when you are suspended outside of the airplane was terrifying, as was when Marley started loosening straps once the parachute opened for a 'more comfortable" ride down. Other than that it was just surreal. You sort of felt like you were falling but you didn't really feel like you were about to die. All in all I'm glad I did it, but I never need to do it again. And you will all die laughing at me when I show you this video when we're home!

We are heading to Tongariro National Park tomorrow to do the Tongariro Crossing...fingers crossed for more nice weather!!!

xoxoxox