Hobbits, Wine and Geothermal Fun

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We woke up and headed a few doors down to find the closest coffee and breakfast, which happened to be a gym cafe type thing. Works for me! Latte and peanut butter protein ball.

We assembled at the car, loaded up and headed to the first stop of the day for our continued roadtrip- Hobbiton. Initially when I'd planned out the entire itinerary for this trip, we were just heading to the South Island. My friends reviewed my plans and Nathan stated, "Looks good but you need to make one change. Include Hobbiton." I looked at my map- we had to fly out of Auckland anyway to get to Fiji, so if we just roadtripped south it was definitely doable. "Done," I replied. A good chunk of our group was pretty into Lord of the Rings, if not the books then at least the movies.

Hobbiton was gorgeous. It's in the middle of rolling green hills down some farm roads on private property. It's an official movie set tour you pay to get a bus ride and tour guide for. Our guide was incredibly nerded out on Lord of the Rings lore and could pretty much answer any question any normal reader would think to ask. He walked us through the set, past dozens of brightly painted hobbit holes surrounded by gardens and butterflies. Yes, the gardens are real. There are literally people in this world whose full-time jobs are to grow vegetables in Hobbiton. The guide said they compete against each other for the largest produce and take the harvest home to eat.

At the end of the tour you get to stop at the Green Dragon Inn for a pint. I also purchased a yummy meat pie. Meat pies are a thing in New Zealand. After finishing our tour, we were dropped back off at the gift shop. I ended up buying a bookmark and a couple Green Dragon mugs (only one made it intact back home). And then Chris and I spotted ice cream, which sounded amazing. New Zealand has proved to be a quite toasty and muggy country so cold ice cream sounded perfect. I was very entertained by the Hobbit Crunch flavor which I asked the two girls running the place to add coffee to. "Can you make an affogato?" I asked, hopeful. I really wanted caffeine to go with my sugar rush. "A what?" they asked, "Avocado?" Me, laughing, "no no. Aff-oh-gah-toh. It's just ice cream with coffee on top." They appeared mystified as to why anyone would do such a thing and after they conferred on pricing, they made the apparently odd request. Maybe it's an American thing? You always get it in Italian restaurants back home in the States but I can't honestly remember if I ever had an affogato when in actual Italy. It was absolutely delicious, though. =)

After that we continued our roadtrip to Rotorua, where we'd be staying the next two nights. It'd be nice to stay in one place for more than a night for once!

After getting a little lost, we finally checked into Rock Solid Backpackers and then headed out pretty fast again to check out Volcanic Hills Winery. It's a neat place (not just a wine tasting venue) up a gondola ride overlooking the lake and city. The view was awesome, along with the woman pouring the wine. I think we were all hungrier than we figured and pretty much ordered one of everything off the appetizer menu to share. After five or so wines, I decided New Zealand makes the BEST Sauvignon Blancs. It's now my favorite white wine.

We headed back to the hostel after wine tasting, rested up and then went wandering around the town. One of the many neat things about Rotorua is it has geothermal activity right in town. And it's totally free. We walked around Kuirau Park looking at its bubbling mud pools and billowing steam. We planned to see more geothermal hot spots the next day as well.

Eventually we ended up at Eat Street for dinner. We took forever to pick a restaurant, and when we finally did, I was actually disappointed. The food wasn't that great. It was so unmemorable I couldn't even tell you what the place was called. It served "blah" steak. However, the next place we went to was awesome. It was a craft beer pub called BREW. The food and beer were delicious. I should have saved my stomach real estate for this place. I really don't know where I found room for all this food because after that we ran off to an ice cream place that served donuts with, of course, ice cream. Also yummy. By then it was getting late, so we headed back to the hostel to sleep.

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Nice one
Beautiful