Wednesday, February 10, 2016

New Zealand - Rotorua and Hobitton

We spent Christmas in Rotorua, a town famous for its geysers and mineral water, full of hotels, SPA but with absolutely no people. There was no one on the street and all shops were closed even the gas stations. There was a slight movement in Chinese restaurants as they are not celebrating Christmas but even they were almost empty. We were lucky that on Christmas eve there was a holiday food market for about an hour so that we could kill some time wandering around. And as i mentioned food, we decided that even though it was just the two of us we should have a holiday dinner that was quite unusual for our country but really tasty. We got a lot of sea food and a bottle of New Zealand wine. The strange thing for me was that the sea food in the market was about half the price of the sausages. Kiwis live on an island and they barely eat sea food - strange paradox...The other strange thing was that they do not celebrate on Christmas Eve, but actually spend the whole Christmas day with their families and have the holiday dinner on 25th which explained the empty streets all day long
 All tourists that were in Rotorua - they were 98% Chinese and 2% maori -  spent the day in the park by the lake sunbathing or trying to pedal with the water wheel wearing a life-jacket even though the depth of the water was no more than a meter. I suppose they were instructed to pedal only along the shore as they looked so disoriented that if they were left to go wherever they wanted the possibility to get lost or drawn was huge. As there was nothing to be done we decided to go hiking and then spend the afternoon in the geyser park. The most famous hike was to the top of the 'Rainbow mountain' and it sounded really seductive with that awesome name so we did not think twice and climbed it. To be honest we saw neither rainbow nor the promised yellow-orange colors of the rocks but the view from the top was worth it. The paths were also really nice organized - if you are with a bike, then you climb up along with the hikers, but for the way down there is a one way strictly downhill route so that the possibility to run over someone is minimal :)
 Awesome view over the hills
We found something that looked like a really huge red dandelion :)
Absolute empty streets - very strange for us as usually in Bulgaria on Christmas everything is working and the streets are full with people

Next stop was the hot pools park in Rotorua. There are a few parks where you can see the geysers but as i said they were closed due to the holidays and even if they were not i doubt that we would have paid the money they charged for entrance as they seemed really a lot so we went to walk around in Kuirau (i have no idea how this name is pronounced, it was quite a struggle with the Maori names)  According to the legend in early 1800s the lake in the center of the park was cooler and was known as Taokahu. One day a beautiful young woman was bathing in the water when a dragon dragged her in his lair below the lake. The gods were very angry and made the lake boil so that the dragon would be destroyed forever. Since then, the bubbling lake and the streaming land around is known as Kuirau. If you want to feel like the dragon when the water started boiling there are some free foot baths in the park where you can put your feet in the hot water, and if you do not want to get wet you can have a picnic on the picnic tables or just walk around the paths and admire the bubbling mud

Picnic by the greenest lake i have ever seen
Mud bath anyone?
In the 'normal' cold lake there were about 10 black beautiful swans.

We woke up really early on the next morning as we had to travel to Matamata from where the Hobbiton tour was supposed to begin. Or at least this is what we thought but after we showed our tickets to the lady she said that our tour is reserved from the farm entrance and we have about 10 min to travel 20km if we do not want to miss it. Well with the awful speed limits in New Zealand we could not get there on time, actually we were only 5 min late but the bus was already gone so we could either cancel the tour or take one from 10.30. We rescheduled for 10.30 even though the agreement with the rental company was to return the car at noon in Auckland which was definitely impossible to happen. But it was better to pay an additional day for the car rather than miss Hobbiton. After we waiting for about half an hour i decided to ask the guide for the next tour if she could take us if there are some free slots. Fortunately for us, some people did not show up so we managed to hop on the 10 o'clock tour. Why didn't i think of this earlier....But anyway, all of a sudden the fairy-tale began and we found ourselves in Tolkien's Middle Earth. It was thousand times better that watching it on a movie, it felt so real that i was expecting to see a hobbit opening some door and walking out of his hobbit hole. It was awesome and was worth it every cent


 All flowers are real
 Please, come in for a tea

 Knock, knock, anyone home?

Green Dragon Inn where we got free beer

In my case - root beer


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