Apr 1

April Fools Day. It looks like it’s a thing out here too. Luckily no one pulled any fast ones on me. I wake up to 14 days of clothes hanging all over the campervan. Half of the items are still wet. There is a clothes line nearby so I bring my clothes over to it and hang it up; ahh the good ol’ days. I take an hour to shower, clean up and eat and my clothes are nearly dry as it is time to leave. Good enough.

Lake Taupo is a couple of hours away and Hobbiton another hour and a half after that. I will admit, the dork side of me was pretty excited to see Hobbiton. The drive was nice but nothing exciting to write bout except for my wish that this van had more power. One lane roads especially suck when you’re underpowered. Cars in front of me would drive way too slow through the mountain roads, and the only time there would be two lanes (aka my best chance at passing) is when there is a steep uphill. So I would be stuck behind these cars for miles and when I get a chance to pass these cars the hill is too steep for the van and the cars pull away from me. Rinse and repeat. This is one of the greatest driving tortures EVER!!! A driving tease! I was going insane! Luckily Lake Taupo wasn’t far away and it gve me a break from the torture.

From the 30 minutes I spent at Lake Taupo, I liked it. It seems like there is a LOT of new construction with a lot of restaurants and spots lakeside. For a touristic/built up area, it was pretty neat. There are also some neat activities nearby including white water rafting which would have been fun to do, but I’m out of time. I’ll have to add this to the list for the next trip.

I hop back in the van and set off for Hobbiton.

For those of you who are not familiar with Hobbiton, it a village for the hobbits (no way!) in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies based on JRR Tolkien’s books. If you’re not familiar with them and have 20 hours to kill, go watch the movies or if you have more time to kill, read the books. Be warned, the first movie of each trilogy is somewhat boring. Man, this is a dorky paragraph. After they rebuilt the set for The Hobbit trilogy, they left it up as a tourist trap, I mean attraction and are making a KILLING off of this.

You feel stupid about all these things. buy generic cialis There are various kinds of medications that directly focus on increasing blood flow to the penis, so foods that are good for your online cialis vascular system including heart, brain, and penile is in good shape or if it needs a tune-up through lifestyle changes. It is important to assess previous medical reports in order to highlight a strong link ordering viagra online between ED and cardiovascular disease, diabetes or hormonal imbalance, it is suggested to treat that condition first. These canadian discount cialis signs and symptoms are formed in order to counterpart the reduced blood sugar level. I show up to the office, pay $75 for a tour ticket and they throw me on a charter bus which takes us about 3 miles away to Hobbiton. The tour is 2 hours long, but we spent half an hour on the bus. It is a private road with a few steep grades and sheep roaming free all over the place. We get there and the tour guide walks us into the town. Hobbiton was built on a farmland (it still is farmland) after Jackson’s crew scouted areas all over New Zealand in an effort to find a filming site. They were looking for a place where you couldn’t see any manmade structures from the town; roads, telephone poles, towers, you name it. So they found this place, talked to the owner and struck a deal. This is all my interpretation by they way. They got the New Zealand Army to build a road to the site so that they could bring in all their equipment and then paid the owners to go on vacation for a few weeks while they filmed the movies. If I heard correctly, some of the higher ups stayed in the homes of these farmers instead of nearby towns like the rest of the film crew. During the tour they also made Peter Jackson sound like quite the perfectionist (or a-hole) as he had his crew redo trees and even repaint every silk leaf (I’d say a couple hundred thousand leaves) of the fake tree above Bilbo’s house just because he didn’t like the shade of green. They follow this up with, “the only time you see this tree in the movie is in a far away shot.” After walking through the village, we end up at the Green Dragon Inn where they let you pick from one of four beverages that are exclusive to the site. They also have costumes here for dress up. Not too shabby.

So, what’s the verdict? Umm, the tour was neat, but you are slightly rushed as the tour guide has an agenda. You are also walking with a group of 30 people or so (amongst other groups) which makes it a bit trickier to get some good pictures without other folks in them. Everyone wants to pose at every spot for a picture, which is expected. Also, these are all just outer shells, they are not a bunch of tiny homes which I feel everyone expects. If I heard correctly there are about 44 of these home shells and only 2 of the 44 actually have an indoor area, BUT, there is nothing inside; it isjust a blank room. So, with that said, it is neat to see the attention to detail that the film crew provided, but at $75 it is quite a fee to pay for 1.5 hours of touring. Unless you are a big fan of the movie or are really excited to see tiny walls with tiny doors on the sides of hills. I’m not sure if I would say this is a must do. It is even more expensive if the busses pick you up from the neighboring towns. Remember, this is in the middle of nowhere. All in all, still fun but I was slightly underwhelmed for the price.

Cheers

Two Notes on the pictures:
1. Here come excuses. I had a lot of trouble with the lighting on this one. The sun was behind a lot of pictures which made it tricky to get decent shots. A lot of them turned out mediocre and there wasn’t much of a chance for repeats due to the crowd, but oh well, I’m still showing them.
2. I went crazy with the diorama effect. There are a lot of colors everywhere and I wanted to see how well this worked in making the houses look like miniatures. I would say I didn’t do a great job here but still fun to mess around with. The diorama effect seems to work better with a slight overheard shot.