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