New Zealand Part Two - Hamilton, Waitomo Caves and Hobbiton

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We enjoyed a bit of a lie in for our first morning at Hamilton, as we had planned to go to the Waitomo Caves for one of their afternoon tours later on. I don’t think that we actually took any photos in Hamilton itself as, to be honest, there wasn’t really a lot to see, and we didn’t really spend a lot of time there!

We left the motel (which was very nice by the way – very spacious and we had a full kitchenette too which was a bit of a bonus!) at around 12:30pm, and we drove down to the caves, which were about an hour away. We reached the ‘Spellbound’ tour office at around 1:45pm, which meant that we were just on time for their 2pm tour.

We purchased our tickets and were told to just wait outside, where our driver/tour guide would load us onto the bus. Once on there, we were joined by around 12 other people altogether, and we started making our way through the hills and valleys, through farmland and down to the cave entrance. On the way, our driver Norm was giving us plenty of information on the area and the caves, and also encouraging us to get to know each other, meaning that we had to each give a little speech about ourselves, which was pretty embarrassing as usual but at least we were all in the same boat!

Norm then stopped the bus and suggested that we take the walk down to the cave entrance, which followed a path into a valley, and gave some great views of the scenery around us. Everyone opted for this, and around ten minutes later we met back up with Norm, where we were each handed a helmet with a light/torch attached to it. We were given a little briefing and we were then lead into the dark cave. We walked about 20 metres or so into the cave and then were told to turn off our lights. We literally could not see our hands in front of our faces – it was completely pitch black in there and we hadn’t even gone that far in!

Lights back on, we continued further into the cave and eventually reached a large inflatable boat, which we all piled onto. We were then told to turn off our lights and be very quiet. We floated in silence down the underground Waitomo River and underneath thousands of glowworms. They looked like stars above our heads and it was quite a surreal and magical moment. It was amazing how much they lit up the cave considering they were the only light source down there. We drifted about a hundred metres or so down the cave and then turned around and came back to the platform. We tried to take a picture of the glowworms but our camera just wasn’t good enough (they did say beforehand that it is very difficult to get a good picture of them due to the lighting), but you can always google it if you want to get an idea of what they looked like! Once off the boat, Norm asked us to keep our lights off as we walked back through the cave. Amazingly, our eyes had adjusted so well to the darkness that we were able to just about see each other in the same place that we had stopped earlier when we couldn’t see a thing.

Of course, when we stepped back outside into bright sunlight, we were all temporarily blinded again anyway, stumbling around like little moles until our eyes re-adjusted to the light! We left our helmets on the wooden shelves that they had set up there and then made our way up a hill to a small shelter for some hot chocolate and biscuits. We then got back onto the bus and were driven to the entrance of a second cave, for which we were not required to wear helmets as they had developed a full wooden boardwalk with lighting throughout the cave.

We wandered through, taking pictures of the different limestone formations, stalactites and stalagmites that had developed from water dissolving the rock over millions of years. Occasionally we would see the bones of an animal that had fallen down a ‘Tomo’ – a vertical shaft from the open ground above, of which there were many throughout the caves. One of this was a large ancient Moa (large bird, like an emu) fossilised skeleton, and you could still clearly see the whole outline of the bird, including the skull, pelvis and it’s large claws, even though it may have been there for several thousand years.

It was all really fascinating, and eventually we made our way back out of the cave and back to the bus. We drove back to the tour office, again passing through the valleys and above the caves that we had just been walking through, and occasionally we could see the holes in the ground that would fall straight down into the caves. We got back to the office and each thanked Norm for a great tour – he had a great knowledge of the cave systems there after caving for several decades and developing the majority of the second cave himself along with a few friends. We got back to the car at about 5:15pm, meaning that we had been on the tour for just over three hours – well worth the money that we paid for the tour!

We got back to our room just over an hour later, ate some dinner and then started packing our stuff ready for our move to Taupo the next morning. However, we had planned to stop off at a certain little Hobbit village halfway through the journey! Yes, we were visiting the set of Hobbiton from the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy and the ongoing ‘The Hobbit’ films, and we were both pretty excited about this! We left at around 9am the next day, and reached the town of Matamata around 40 minutes later. We spotted the signs to Hobbiton and pulled up to a car park on a small farm.

We walked through the entrance, bought our tour tickets and then hopped on a bus which was just about to leave – we had timed it perfectly! Our driver gave us a short briefing of what the tour would consist of, and also explained the various areas that were used by the crew during the filming of the movies as we made our way into the valley and towards the main set. You couldn’t see any of it from the road and they had the area declared a no-fly zone during filming, for which several pilots were permanently banned for trying to sneak a peek at the set!

We eventually pulled up next to a sign welcoming us to Hobbiton, and a lady introduced herself as our tour guide and just made sure that we were aware of what we could and couldn’t do and touch, etc. We then wandered through a cutting in the hill (famously known as ‘Gandolf’s cutting’, and the place where Gandalf rode into Hobbiton on the cart in ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’) and emerged out into Hobbiton! It was EXACTLY like it is in the films, with dozens of little hobbit holes dotted around – each of them very individual and varying in size and décor. The set was completely outdoors, meaning that the indoor scenes depicted in the films were actually filmed in a studio – the doors didn’t actually open into little hobbit houses, there was actually just a wooden board behind the majority of them – but it could have fooled you into thinking otherwise!

Our guide told us lots of stories about the development of the set, and pointed out various areas of the set where different scenes were filmed. She also explained how Peter Jackson was such a perfectionist that even for a one second shot of the area in the film, they would hire multiple Hobbit extras to perform various day-to-day tasks in the background, that the average viewer would never even notice unless they watched very carefully and frame-by-frame! It was therefore no wonder that the budget of the movie was blown by a ridiculous amount, but at least it gave us four (and counting) awesome movies!

We wandered around, taking lots of pictures of the Hobbit holes and the garden areas as we listened to the stories. The location of the set itself was discovered by Peter Jackson from a helicopter as he was scoping the area. Once filming was complete, the set was actually ordered to be demolished to return the land to the farmer that owned it, however soon after the farmer asked if they could stop immediately as public interest in viewing the set was so high. Eventually they rebuilt the set again for ‘The Hobbit’ films and it is now a permanent fixture that should last at least another 50 years, and probably many more! The gardens there are actually constantly being tended by gardeners and various fruits and vegetables are being grown there all year round.

Once we had finished looking around the set at the bottom of the hill, we set off up the hill to Bag End – the home of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, with the famous tree perched on top of their hobbit hole. From there we had great views of the set below, and also across to the ‘party tree’ from the films and also the lake, the bridge, the mill and the Green Dragon pub. It really is a beautiful area and you can see why Peter Jackson picked it as a perfect spot to build the set. We got a few pictures of Bag End, and could actually see into there a little bit – this was the deepest of the hobbit holes as they filmed some scenes from just inside the doorway looking out across Hobbiton, so they had to dig out the space for all of the film crew to fit inside there!

We then made our way down the other side of the hill and along the side of the lake, across the bridge and towards the Green Dragon pub, where we both enjoyed a mug of fresh ‘lake water’ (which suspiciously came out of a tap!) and took a few photos of the inside of the pub. Although the majority of the outside of the pub was used in scenes, the inside of the pub was actually rebuilt recently to replicate the inside of the pub in the films, and they’ve done a really good job of it! We took a few more pictures of the outside areas, including some great pictures of some hobbit holes across the lake that were reflected beautifully in the water, and were then guided back through the set and back onto the bus.

We really enjoyed our tour and would obviously recommend it to any Lord of the Rings fans! It actually exceeded our expectations as we half expected it to just be a few hobbit holes dotted around, but the whole set was literally just like a little village! Awesome day had there, and we were soon on our way to our next stop – Taupo!

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