A Trek into Middle Earth

After the very adventurous day we had yesterday, today started a little on the late side. We had our usual breakfast sandwich at the little pastry shop and slowly packed all our stuff to check out of the hotel. We managed to get everything ready and checked out right at the hotel’s 10am check-out time. They let us stow our bags at the front while we went to exchange a bit more money for the remainder of our trip in New Zealand.

We weren’t supposed to pick up the rental car until noon, but we figured that the rental place might appreciate if we came early on the off chance that they had everything ready to avoid the same bottleneck that happened with all the groupon people at the hotel during check-in. So we chartered a cab and were on our way shortly thereafter.

The rental place is called Jucy, which is really an awkward word to use in a sentence when food is not involved – and let’s be honest, sometimes it is a bit awkward even when food is involved. But they had our car ready when we arrived and we were out the door with minimal effort on our part. We decided to rent a GPS too, so as not to rely on our memory and questionable satellite coverage on our phones; which greatly improved the entertainment value of the drive listening to our new friend tell us where to turn in a New Zealand accent. It ended up being pretty handy and definitely worth the extra money. The system would chime in throughout the trip when things were coming up that required a little more attention and talked us through exactly how we should react with plenty of time to do so.

And then we were off to our next stop in our New Zealand adventure – Rotorua. But first, a small detour to a small hamlet in Middle Earth known as Hobbiton!

We found out that the day before was Bilbo’s birthday and we were more than a little miffed that we had missed it. But then I reminded Tyler that Bilbo would certainly not have any issue with celebrating his birthday twice and we felt a lot better about our tardy arrival.

We were certainly ready for Party Business!!

We made a pit stop for lunch in a small village called Gordonton, at a small little café known as the Firepot. After taking one look at today’s special, we both knew what we would be ordering – Ribs served with Kumara Fries and Coleslaw! Our plates arrived relatively quickly and we were ready to enjoy our meals when the waitress also brought out a bowl of water with a lemon wedge for both of us. We thanked her for the new items and as she walked away we looked at each other with the same puzzled look on our faces.

‘What do you reckon we are supposed to do with that water?’

‘I’m not entirely sure, maybe we are supposed to dip our fingers in it to get the BBQ sauce off our hands?’

‘That’s kind of what I was thinking too, but I imagine we might get some pretty funny looks if we dip our hands in it and that is not what the bowls are for.’

‘True, but to be fair, we will probably get strange looks either way we use them if it was not the appropriate use.’

I figure we had a 50/50 chance of getting it right here.

Sound logic. So we made our best educated guess and went with it – Sidenote: Lemon and warm water does pretty well at getting BBQ sauce off of one’s fingers.

Hobbiton really is a magical place! It is in the heart of absolutely beautiful country, with rolling green hills accented with an appropriate number of trees. They really did an incredible job of recreating this little town. I really can’t do it justice in my description so I won’t try past this.

Try not to be happy surrounded by views like this!

Our tour guide seemed like he would fit in quite nicely amongst the Hobbits. He was extremely excited about everything and anything that was said seemed to make him happy – almost giddy. He even talked with a slight lisp that seemed to be right out of a caricature of middle earth.

I mean, I guess I could get pretty giddy too if I got to hang out here every day!

All in all, the tour was amazing and a must see for anyone! Even if you are not a big, huge Tolkien geek, at the very least you get to see beautiful country and make your Lord of the Rings geek friends completely jealous! Tyler and I were a bit disappointed with the time the tour spent at the Green Dragon though. We felt a bit rushed drinking our complementary beer and I couldn’t help but feel a bit remiss that we could not try all four of the varieties that were offered. They had food there too, which makes me believe that you could have found a tour during the day that spent a bit more time at the Green Dragon – It just wasn’t our tour. Tyler concluded that they should make a special ‘Dwarf’ tour of Hobbiton where they take you to an overlook of the town and say, ‘Look, there’s Hobbiton. Now, everybody, let’s get some ale at the Green Dragon!’

Here's to life - The Hobbit Life, that is!

He had clearly given it a lot of thought, explaining further how he had thought of first calling it the Drunk Hobbiton Tour, but that probably wouldn’t fly with marketing. But if you called it the Dwarf Hobbiton Tour, everyone would be able to read into what you meant.

After a quick jaunt into the gift shop we were back on the road and on our way to Rotorua. It was getting dark so we did not get to see much of a view, but there were two parts where the vegetation grew up and over you so that you were driving through a living tunnel. I love it when that happens! It is such a foreign concept to this desert rat.