Hobbiton

Today I went to Hobbiton and it was everything I dreamed it would be. I left the coastal art deco town of Napier and its surrounding vineyards this morning for Rotorua, a sulfur smelling town known for its hot springs and Maori culture. The irony is that I'm not actually doing anything here, as I ended up using this as a launch point for visiting Hobbiton, the Hobbit village created for LOTRs, and some glowworm caves tomorrow. I did a Maori tour in Kaikoura and sulfur pools in Hammer Springs and Franz Josef, so I feel like that is a fair compromise.

Today, first up, was Hobbiton. Now, I am as skeptical as the next person. My LOTR tour around Wellington was kind of a let down, especially since we basically looked at a wooded area near the city and then saw the lackluster Wega Cave (btw, I told someone today that I thought the Wega Cave was basically a glorified shop, and she almost screamed at me. Apparently, it's a pilgrammage site for the movie devotees/special effect gurus. Tread lightly, friends).

 But Hobbiton, even if you don't know anything about LOTR, is awesome. It's all these little houses carved out of a hillside built for Hobbits, so the doors are like 4 feet tall. They are just fascades for the most part (they have a little area before the wall reinforces them...our guide showed us one today and I almost went rogue and set up camp in one. I'd love to live there, and if I'd had more on me than a granola bar, some water, and gloves, I might have tried). But it's arranged in a village and even has a lake and gardens. It has to be one of the coolest movie sets anywhere. Apparently the first version was taken down after LOTR, but they rebuilt it for the Hobbit and then saved it for tourists dollars (people went after they took down the first one, but it was mainly just empty holes).

 Anyway, lovely day! Afterwards we went to go feed lambs and even though I was with the guide the whole time and waiting patiently, these two 18 year olds managed to cut in front of me when I had my back turned for TWO seconds to feed the lambs themselves. Ugh. I had a very upset 5 minutes, especially since they could have at least had the decency to share (and hello, tour guide, what the deuce?), but that's karma, right? And clearly, I had enough good things happen to not sweat the small stuff. That is what I get for trying to video one of the lambs "ba-ing" and thus being distracted to begin with...darn little guys were so cute!