Part 7, the end - Early - Mid July, 2024 – Queenstown, Auckland, New Zealand

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Queenstown

Hobbiton

Now we are on our own.  It’s quite different from the comradery we have been enjoying the past 10 days.  For the last time on this trip we do laundry, and pack camera gear and other items we will not need until we get back home.

Queenstown from above

Once complete we walk back into town for some shopping, lunch and a ride on the Skyline Gondola.  The Skyline Gondola ends 1476’ above Queenstown providing a commanding view of town, Lake Wakatipu and the surrounding mountains.  On top we have several activities to choose from; luge rides, guided walks, bungee swinging, restaurants and shopping.  They also offer a service to transport your mountain bike to the top, on a gondola, for you to ride trails back down.  We opt for the less active activities; restaurant, sightseeing, and shopping.  

Our last full day on the South Island.  We walk down into town again, views of the lake and mountains are mesmerizing.  Picking up a few items at the grocery store, then returning to the room we enjoy a light lunch, preparing for our Lord of the Rings Tour.

Lake Wakatipu tour boat

Glenorchy

Frost on the 4th of July

The van arrives a few minutes early, we board, and are off.  We are in a van full of 9 Lord of the Rings fans.  Sol, our driver, seems to be the biggest fan knowing all, and singing songs from the movies.  We make several stops; he puts us in the mood of the movie.  He has a book with photos from the movies of the spots where we are standing.  He has back stories of the actors and local participants.  While we are riding from one location to the next, we listen to music from the movies.  It is fully immersive.

Location of Isengard

In the dense forest he breaks out cloaks and swords for us to dress-up in, acting out as Hobbits, Elves, or Gandalf.  Nicida was an Elf, I was a very tall Hobbit.  It was an enjoyable tour; we wish we had watched the movies prior to taking the tour so we would have had fresh memories of the scenes he was talking about.

Back in our room we witness more gold and pink clouds as the sun sets.  We retire early, tomorrow we are on a flight to Auckland, on the North Island.

Our last evening on the South Island

Auckland, North Island, New Zealand

Hobbiton set

No problems with our flight to Auckland.  After a 30-minute limo ride, we are back in the big city.  Our hotel is on a pier sticking into the harbor.  Looking off in the distance, many sailboats weave their way across the Waitemata Harbor.  Closer, we notice cargo ships tied up to large docks.  Multiple ship-to-shore cranes are poised, waiting to move the many containers stacked on the ship.  Even closer, small water taxis wait for riders to board delivering them across the bay; some for work, others for adventures.

The North Island of New Zealand is the more populated of the two, with 4 million of the 5.2 million total population.  Auckland itself has 1.5 million inhabitants.

Back in our room we make tour reservations to see the Hobbiton set one day and Te Puia Geothermal Park and Maori Culture the next day.  As it turns out we take the same general route to both locations, turning in different directions the last half hour of our 2+ hour ride.  We also look into the Auckland Hop-on Hop-off bus for our final day.  Our final day’s itinerary set, we head into town to see downtown Auckland.  We find a few tourist shops, but generally we feel like it is a bit more business-like.  Tonight is another early night.  Out tour is scheduled to pick us up at 6 AM with a several hour drive to the Hobbiton Movie Set.

It is 36° as we start our trip.  The farther South we go the colder it gets, with frost on the ground the last part of our ride.  Clouds and fog come and go.  Our driver fills the time with New Zealand details.  There are 35 million head of cattle, 30 million sheep, 200,000 farmed turkeys, and about a million deer farmed for their venison, which we learn is primarily sold to Germany.  We are told that New Zealand is also known for racehorses.

Approaching Hobbiton we turn off on to a small road with idyllic rolling hills, green pastures, and lonesome, majestic trees.  We follow the road to the park entrance where people are lined up, waiting for their timed tour bus to arrive.  We arrive a bit early, so we stop for something to eat and meander through the gift shop, planning purchases for Hobbit fans in the family.  We find Hobbit and Lord of the Rings ‘official’; books, T-shirts, hats, maps, posters, jewelry, toys, collectible dolls (quite expensive) and the official beer; Southfarthing - ale, stout, cider and ginger beer.  The beers are only available in Hobbiton.  

The set occupies 12 acres of a 1,200-acre sheep farm still owned by a single family.  There are 44 hobbit holes, only two can be toured, the rest are doors with a small storage area behind.  We stroll through town, the attention to detail is amazing.  Homes of gardeners have garden tools, flowerpots, wheelbarrows, shovels; some hobbits have meals prepared setting on an outside table with bread, fruits, desserts and pitchers with glasses waiting to be filled.  We get the feeling they just stepped into the house for a moment.

Our tour guide relates stories of the actors and events that happened during filming of the movies.  We follow the road to Bagshot Row where we enter the home of a basket maker.  The attention to detail continues on inside the house.  Bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, living room, pantry.  In each room are the items that one would need to live under those conditions.  We are blown away by the work that went into making this town.  Our last stop is the Green Dragon Inn.  I have a ginger beer which I have taken a liking to.  Boarding the bus back to the parking lot we realize we have been here for over two hours.  If you are a Hobbit, or a Lord of the Rings fan this is a definite must see.

Arriving back in Auckland we head back into town for a late lunch.  We find the downtown area is built up much the same as Melbourne and Sydney, with multi-level food courts occupying the empty space between the larger office buildings.  The one we come across has many choices; Sushi, Japanese, Korean, burgers, empanadas from Argentina, and dim sum to name a few.  We choose Japanese Pho and a rice dish, both of which are very tasty.  Tomorrow another 6 AM tour pickup.

Today is another long drive.  If I had known ahead of time we would have stayed someplace local instead of another 2+ hour van ride, on the same road.  We face heavy traffic this Monday morning.  We are also slowed down over most of the drive due to patches of heavy fog.

Te Puia vents and geysers

We arrive at Te Puia 10 minutes before our tour starts.  We are not able to learn much before we are on our way.  Our first stop is a darkened building to see the nocturnal Kiwi.  The ones we see are almost a foot tall.  Back outside we are taken to the thermal features of the park.  We start with boiling mud pots, moving on to small geysers, erupting a few feet every few minutes.  The many steam vents surrounding us, emitting the familiar sulfur odor.  From there we ride a tram to the New Zealand Māori Arts and Crafts Institute.  We see indigenous students working with master crafts people carving wood, jade, bone and stone, and weaving.  The students are on 2-to-3-year degree programs to learn their craft.  We end our day here with a buffet lunch.

Mud pots

On to Wai-o-tapu, a geothermal wonderland.  We see and smell thermal activity.  Mud pots bubbling, green and yellow lakes steaming, rotten-egg odor of venting sulfur.

Geyser runoff

This is a walkable park; we are amazed at all the different thermal activity.  It makes me think of a compact version of Yellowstone.  Our ride home takes over three hours, arriving after dark we decide to have room service.  It has been a long day.  Tomorrow we tour Auckland.

Getting to sleep in, we wake at 730.  The breakfast buffet is one of the better ones we have sampled.  As we are dining we see many water taxis scoot across the harbor.  The flurry of activity seems coordinated, a taxi stops then holds in the open water for a minute or two, a different taxi pulls out of one of the nearby docks, then the waiting taxi takes its place.

Google directs us to a spot in the middle of a city block to purchase our Hop-on Hop-off tour of Auckland.  We have gone through this before.  Looking for a door with an office is our first mistake.  We miss the two agents sitting on a bench selling ticket for the bus we are looking for.  A return trip looking for the doorway we missed shows us our error.  Bus, museum and Sky City tickets in hand we wait for the bus.  Considering the size of Auckland it is very green.  It sits among 50 volcanos, the last one erupting 600 years ago.  After the traditional ride the full circuit we hop off at the Auckland Museum, adding a ticket for the Māori Culture presentation.

Hand-woven sail

The presentation is a series of dances, starting with Haka, the traditional war dance, which seems to be the main dance we ever see on television.  They perform several other dances, with a dancer explaining and interpreting their movements.

We tour the natural history, and the Māori Civilization exhibitions in the museum.  We are astounded by the 80’ canoe and hand woven sail both made in the 1800’s.  Canoes were their only form of transportation before motorized ships.

Sky City Tower

Nearing sunset we take the bus to the Sky City Tower.  After an elevator ride, we find ourselves 700’ above the city with a 360° view.  We tour the observation deck finally deciding to enjoy our last evening on this trip watching the sunset, dining on cheese and salmon.  The landscape below, looks like a toy village with lights blinking.  Walking back to our room we stop for chips and the highly recommended Tip-Top ice cream.  The ice cream is very tasty, but I love ice cream.  Tomorrow, we head to the airport then back home to the States.

Auckland at night

Our last day of our adventure, we are greeted with beautiful gold and pink clouds of sunrise.  I notice that yesterday’s empty parking lot, adjacent to a large cargo ship, is full of cars and trucks, all standing in lines like soldiers waiting to march.

With warmer weather expected, in Auckland, Los Angeles, and TX we decide we don’t need the thermal layers we have been wearing since we arrived in New Zealand.  We go through the airport check in process for the seventh time this trip.  Our little scale saves us again, indicating our luggage is just under the 50 lb limit.  Our trip from Auckland to LA is just over 12 hours, then four hours waiting for our three hour flight home.  Through the magic of crossing the international date line we arrive home only six hours later than we started… If only it was really that short.

Our flight to LAX is smooth.  I break out my laptop to import images into Lightroom and do some preliminary editing.  My laptop does not make it past the bootup screen.  I try it several times, getting the same results.  I sit back, a bit frustrated, wondering what has happened to my laptop.  Instead of dwelling on it, I listen to music and try to sleep.  Nicida has better luck with her laptop, although it moves slow.  She finally gives up and watches movies to pass the time.  Little to no sleep for her.  We make it through immigration without any problems.  Finding the place to leave our bags for the next plane is a bit of an issue, along with finding which terminal we have to go to for domestic flights.  Finding our way, we only a few hours to wait for our last flight.  Trying my laptop again, it starts up and runs like normal.  Whew.  I work on my images.

Our final flight is empty, we each have a row to ourselves.  The plane is cold.  We put on our jackets to stay warm.  I resort to working on my images on the flight putting the laptop on my lap to keep me warm.  Arriving at our final airport we find our driver for the ride home.  I don’t think I could have driven it myself, the long hours on the plane and road traffic would have done me in.  All is normal at the house.  Back to the 90+ degree heat of Texas.

I hope you enjoyed our Australia/New Zealand story and photos.  Our next trip is already planned.

Our last morning in New Zealand

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark