Wellington Journal

NI Days 1-2: Rotorua and Hamilton

We had a LOOONG day driving on Friday, and the girls were troopers.  It was Good Friday, and it turns out that almost nothing was open, so we actually had dinner at Burger King (I don’t think we’ve ever had dinner at Burger King before).  Alison kept saying “good dinner, daddy!  Thanks for this good dinner, daddy!”, so I guess it went over well. 

We spent all day yesterday in Rotorua, first visiting the Green and Blue Lakes (which were indeed somewhat different hues, but not startlingly so), then going to Te Puia for the afternoon.  The thermal activity there was amazing—bubbling mud pools, geysers, and smoke coming out of the ground everywhere.  The reputed sulphur smell was there, but not nearly as bad as we’d been led to believe.  We stayed in a nice B&B on the outskirts of town (definitely wouldn’t have wanted to be downtown—it’s a very touristy place, probably the most touristy place we’ve been in all of NZ) with a very opinionated host (“Auckland is terrible!  The only thing worth seeing in Auckland is Waterworld”  “This map [our map, a national road atlas] is terrible.  I hate this map. It doesn’t even have our road on it.”)  It was mostly entertaining, though I have to say that I was ready to leave this morning. 

Today we made our way to Hamilton via Hobbiton, which was totally fun.  Dug will fill you in on all the weird restrictions they had (they can’t wear costumes, speak Hobbit-talk, etc.), but I will just say that it was an absolutely gorgeous tour around a sheep farm that has a lot of the hobbit holes still intact.  Tonight we are at a hostel, with an exceedingly friendly and helpful hostess.  The beds are saggy, so my back will be shrieking tomorrow, but for now we are all happily ensconced in our space.

posted by Sara @ 7:47 PM