Advertisement
Hi All,
We woke up at Sasha’s in her amazingly comfy warm bed (well anything is warmer than our campervan bed). Sasha cooked us a tasty breakfast of bacon, spinach and poached egg on toast. (Wow it was so good).
We said our goodbyes and thanked Sasha for everything; she works in a Kiwi fruit plantation so gave us some kiwis as a goodbye present. (They have been eaten and were great).
As the weather was so bad the day before we couldn’t do the Mount Manganui walk so as it was beaming sunshine this morning we drove back there to do it!!!
It was a pretty easy walk up; it took us around 40min and was well worth it!! The views from the top are breathtaking, if the weather was a little clearer you could have seen the whole of the northern peninsula. The walk back down was much quicker!!
We left around 12 to head to Matamata to see the Hobbiton film set from the lord of the rings films. The drive was nice and easy and took no time it seemed.
Matamata is a nice quiet little town, there was not much there but as soon as you saw the I-site there you new it was where the films are set…the I-site is a hobbit hole, I could not stop smiling!!! We parked up and went in to book our tickets. We were lucky as there was a tour leaving in 15mins and they drove you there from the I-site for free and brought you back. (It’s the same price ticket to drive yourself there (20 minutes one way-so win-win as there if free parking just round the back of the I-site).
We had an old talkative driver on the bus to Hobbiton called Big John (he wasn’t that big), he gave us loads of information about the town and about the how Hobbiton was built and all about the ‘extras’ of the town, there were only 7 people from Matamata chosen to be extras so they call themselves the chosen seven and have a little group!! (Fair play to them I would be the same).
Once we got there we picked up our tour guide and soon enough we were dropped off at
the entrance to Hobbiton!!
It was just like the film and the amount of detail put in was phenomenal!!! The guide was good (thought he was funnier than he really was though) and gave us loads of information about the site and about the filming. A good tip if you do this tour is to stick around the guide, as he will tell you so much rather than walking off and taking photos all the time. (As the Asian people seemed to do on our tour). Another tip apparently is to get the last tour of the day in the winter and you get to see the end of the tour in the dark, and they light up the lantens.
I hope you enjoy the photos of Hobbiton as it was so hard to get photos to show how much was put into building it and the detail!!!
At the end of the tour we were taken to the Green Dragon Pub (Same as the one in the film) and given a free beer!! WOO HOO!! We both had a stout each and it was delicious!!! The tour was good, however
it was $75 each and maybe worth $50 at most!!! Still it was a must for us and so glad we did it!!
After being dropped off back in Matamata we drove off towards Te Aroha to camp for the night. Te Aroha was a small town but had freedom camping and that was good enough for us!!
We had a nice dinner and a glass of wine before watching a film and hitting the hay after a long day.
Love N&V X
Advertisement
Tot: 0.069s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 12; qc: 32; dbt: 0.0402s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb