So we picked up our little hire car in Auckland and started our trip south, starting off with "thermal hot-spot" Rotorua. We had heard it was a great place to see geysers and enjoy hot pools and mud baths, so we headed south, but on route drove through Matamata as Adam was determined to visit the set of Hobbitton from the Lord of the Rings. We managed to arrive as the bus to the set was departing a luckily jumped on, although Daisy decided to give this one a miss. The set itself was fascinating for a LOTR fan, although most of what was there has been destroyed due to copyright reasons, so although the tree, lake and small hobbit holes remain, your imagination is used to imagine what was there all those years ago (houses,
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