The Rotorua Aftertaste and Hobbiton!

Kia Ora,

This little trip has a lot of great memories. It was also Liams last trip before leaving NZ, so we definitely made the most of it! And it was packed full of adventure!

We drove to Rotorua and arrived for midday. After lunch we wasted no time and went zorbing! Let the picture below give you a better idea!

Zorb at the top of the hill

We all had two goes, however we all shared the first. Three people in one ball and partially filled with water. I will show the video to those who ask as Liams GoPro made an appearance once again! But here's an action shot and our post-zorb reactions!

Veeery wet, and a very squashed Liam

Victory!

After my solo run

 After this we took the Gondola to get a view of Rotorua and Rotorua Lake from above.

But this wasn't the exclusive reason why we were here. As with Queenstown we had some luging to check out. We have five really good videos of these, but all to long to share here. But they were all pretty competitive. Dannii even fell off at a point trying to clutch on to her bag! But it's all part of the fun!

The next day we slowed the pace a little bit. We visited Wai-O-Tapu, a scenic part of weird and wonderful Geysers and Lakes attributed to the geothermal activity in the area.

Geyser

Geezer with Geyser

 

Artists Palette

 

Champagne Lake

Selfie-ception

Apple green Lake

 

I took a walk around the city later in the afternoon and found a park with more geothermal activity and nice viewing areas. Rotorua was a really beautiful place, though one thing I can never get through to you in the form of a blog is the smell. Sometimes it was worse than others, but at times the stench of egg and sulpher was enough to taste it. It seemed to be the price of beauty.

Casual boiling mud pool in the park

The next day we went to Hobbiton. At long last! After having to say no on many previous occasions we were now going! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

HOBBITON!!!

Unleash the Middle Earth wannabee geek in me! I was loving it. Even if we were joking about the wrong film sets! "So which Hobbit hole did Darth Vader live in?" :-)

We arrived at 9am. Highly recommended. This photo taken an hour later would have been full of other tour groups. Instead, it is just perfect!

Dannii looking a bit big for this Hobbit hole

Party tree!

And at the top of the hill, Bag End

 

Liam jumped down the hill and looking like a mong! Haha

And the bass goes wild!

Sat outside Sams house

My new ride. I definitely didn't consider stealing this...

Outside the Green Dragon

The bar

And the drinkers. Had to have one!

A last look at all of Hobbiton!

Aaaaand fulfilled! The tour was amazing- I was so happy I could finally do it!

That afternoon on the route back to Auckland we visited Hamilton Gardens. It was actually really nice, although in comparison to the rest of the trip it wasn't quite hitting sixes. But the gardens were split in to many sections, such as English, Indian, Modern, Chinese, Italian and more. I'll share a couple of my favourite photos :-)

Left to right: Liam, ugly Maori figure

A great last trip for Liam. He will be missed- it's hard to think I'll next see this guy in Nottingham. For that reason I'm not looking forward to it haha. But he will have a great time in Australia and Malaysia before then!

Kia Ora,

Ben

T'was the season

Kia Ora,

We're a few steps in to 2015 now, but let me share my Christmas and New Years with you :-)

This was my first Christmas spent in the Southern hemisphere and hence my first summer Christmas! Begone with the usual ideas of Christmas, this year was a mishmosh of traditions; we satisfied a good mix of German, French, Swedish, Norwegian, Chinese and English traditions.

Ten of us traveled to Coromandel to our Christmas home on the 23rd December. The bach would house us for three days and be the venue for an unforgettable occasion.

When we arrived we had important business to attend to: the bach needed a tree. And even though we didn't have a real tree AND Adele's decorating style caused some debate, it was eventually set in place to overlook proceedings.

The Christmas Crew minus Thomas

Preparations for the Carbonara

The Swedes get their jam on

And Louise and Adele looking larvely!

We sat down as a family on this evening to eat Spaghetti Carbonara and then have a little shindig. We played more Gocha, in which Maren and Adele were undoubtedly the biggest winners! And we partied through the night to Christmas music. When Thomas, Sara and me remained, it seemed only sensible to explore the nearby beach.

Gocha, Maren!

Pull a pose (I think)!

So attractive at the beach...

After a successful exploration this beach became our point of interest on Christmas Eve. With a volley ball, some swimming and a deck of cards the day floated away as we all relaxed.

At the beach!

Volleyball practice

We also looked forward to the evening meal which was a chance for all but the Brits to cook a national dish (seasonal or not). We enjoyed Schniztel, meatballs, pickled herring, coke-cola chicken, potato salad, gingerbread and chocolate truffles. Amazing meal! And finished off with Marens Norwegian touch, Almond Rice Pudding. The beauty of this desert is it included one whole almond which could appear in anybodies dish. The owner had to hide it from everybody else and won a prize at the end. And the winner was... Maren! It's almost as if she fixed it haha!

Before the international meal

Paulines finished gingerbread to be decorated by Adele!

Although Christmas Eve, many countries in Europe open their presents. To upkeep with their tradition, Santa came to visit the bach and delivered the secret santa gifts. Wow that Santa is one attractive guy!

Secret Santa presents delivered by Santa!

And presents greatly enjoyed

Christmas Eve was rounded off with more fun and games, only this time Maren prepared a game for the group. In teams of three, we answered a NZ questionnaire, Articulate (again NZ themed) and creating a song, poem or dance themed around Christmas which were performed at the end. The performances were great and included; Adele, Beni and Louise singing their own version of the 12 days of Christmas; Dannii, Thomas and Emilie dancing to "Rocking around the Christmas Tree"; and Pauline, Sara and Me writing a poem themed on everybody at the Christmas bach.

Our games-host, Maren!

After more night time shenanigans (including Pauline having a very emotional night and crying on everybody's shoulder) the last four standing again visited the beach (me, Adele, Beni and Maren). It was nice watching as the sun rose in the area and funnier still as Adele went YOLO and went swimming without her costume. A very different Christmas morning.

Not long after I had fallen asleep, Dannii woke me up. I had slept through it, but a loud siren had been playing outside apparently warning of a Tsunami. This wasn't what I expected from a Christmas morning, but as the siren had stopped before I was woken up we knew it was a drill. I was very thankful as I had drunk a little to much to be worrying about a Tsunami. Back to bed.

AND THEN IT'S CHRISTMAS!

Waking up much later than any previous Christmas Day, we went to a different beach in the area. We did much more swimming and challenged some locals to Volleyball. The sun was once again glorious and the day was perfect.

We returned to cook. It was time for the Brits to prepare a traditional meal as our meal is very similar to the Kiwi's. In light of this, we changed our meat from Turkey to Ham, otherwise it was the food Brits all know and love. As the night before, the food was a raving success!

Christmas Dinner

English Master Chefs!

Antics were everywhere as we partied again to celebrate our last night at the bach. The Swedes showed all of us a traditional dance which they do around the Christmas tree. This turned in to an unplanned routine to "Rocking around the Christmas tree" and we all picked dance moves whilst literally rocking around the Christmas tree! I think this was the single highlight of the trip and a memory of Christmas I will never forget! Thanks to our Swedes, Sara and Emilie ;-)

And what night is complete without a trip to the beach? Scoring the hat-trick, me, Adele and Pauline went one last time to the local beach.

Though I couldn't spend Christmas with my family, I had an amazing time. I did miss people back home, but there's always next year :-) But for this year, thank you to my friends who made it amazing!

On leaving the bach the next day our car once again went to the beach to top up those tans.

And on the return journey dropping of Adele we ended up on the black sands of Piha (the first beach I ever went to in NZ) and watched the sunset. A great end to a great trip!

Great sunset

Though we would meet most of the guys next week for New Year. We met in Ponsonby and ate the night away whilst playing Gocha, Gyn-Pong and a Norwegian version of Pass-the-Parcel (Maren is something of a game master!).

We watched the fireworks of the sky tower from afar and so my photo's don't do it justice, so I included a couple of googled versions too. A VERY LATE HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

Liam sniffed out this selfie and was right in there!

Kia Ora,

Ben