Hobbits, glowworms and black sand beaches

Last weekend we made our first extensive trip in our newly bought Nissan Bluebird. On early Saturday morning the wheels took us southwest over the Kaimai Ranges into the fertile farming region called Waikato. There we stopped close to the town of Matamata at the Hobbiton movie set from the Lord of the Rings movies. The actual movie set is located on private land which is a working sheep farm, so to get there you need to go on one of the daily 2-hour tours.

Since we went on the first tour of the day, it was very quiet at the location and there were very few visitors. This suited us perfectly.

For those of you not intricately familiar with LotR, Hobbiton is the village where the hobbits Bilbo and Frodo Baggins live at Bag End - the hill with a lone oak tree on top of it. The first half hour or hour or so of Fellowship of the Ring (the first movie in the trilogy) plays out there. In the movies you can see what a wonderful place Hobbiton is located at, but it was even more beautiful in real life. Although the movie set has been returned to its natural state and all the props have been removed, there are still some hobbit holes left and of course land marks like the "Party Tree" and the lake. For the duration of the tour we were more or less free to walk around Hobbiton and explore the amazing green valley Peter Jackson (the director of the movies) chose. Our guide did, however, shepherd us a bit, but told us interesting facts in the mean time (once a 2,2 metre tall German visitor who had dressed up as a hobbit refused to leave when the tour ended!).

We didn't see any hobbits, but a wizard suddenly appeared and shrank Giigan!

The feeling of being there was wonderful. The sun was shining from a blue sky and the whole place felt so full of life and joy (might have been the sheep though). You half expected to see hobbits stepping out of the holes any time. I could have stayed there for hours just soaking up the atmosphere. It was magical. Would have been so cool to sit in the shade beneath the party tree and play RPGs, or use the whole location as a set for LARPing! Or just dress up as a hobbit and sit beneath a tree and read a book like Frodo does at the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring when Gandalf arrives. Unfortunately, we both forgot our hobbit costumes in Finland.

The tour is quite valuable ($58) but we think it's totally worth it. Especially if you're a fan of LotR. As a bonus - since it is a working sheep farm! - you get to see a demonstration of sheep shearing after the tour, and bottle feed some baby lambs too. :-)

A hungry fellow

Around noon we continued west, had lunch in Cambridge, got a bit lost in Hamilton, but finally found our way south to our destination; the Waitomo Caves Village.

The Waitomo area is a mixture of lush farmland and forests spread out over steep terrain consisting of sharp hills and deep valleys and gorges. What makes the area unique, is the limestone base of the earth and the many caves that have formed there. There are in fact about 400 mapped caves, but only 5 are open to guided tours. There are several operators you can book a tour with. We chose "Spellbound", which proved to be just what we wanted, because we were lucky enough to be the only ones on the tour!

As our guide drove us to the Spellbound caves we were quite happy to see lots of buses parked outside the most famous of the caves in the area, which we had considered. Instead of having to cram up with 50 other people in a cave, we now had a private tour and could do everything in our own pace. Marvelous!

The duration of the Spellbound tour is 3 hours. The tour explores two caves: the Spirit Cave and a glowworm cave. The Spirit Cave had very beautiful rock formations and lots of stalactites. There were some glowworms in the ceiling of it, but not nearly as many as in the second cave; the glowworm cave.

Into the darkness of the glowworm cave

In the glowworm cave we boarded a small rubber boat and floated on an underground stream. In the distance we could hear the rushing sound of a waterfall. We didn't use any artificial lights; it was pitch black except for the turquoise light emanating from the thousands and thousands of glowworms in the cave ceiling. The light was so strong it was reflected off the black surface of the water. When we lay down in the boat and looked up, we could see galaxies and constellations pass by as the boat slowly and soundlessly moved forward. It was like looking up at a night sky, with the stars only metres from your eyes. It was fantastic. We were "spellbound" :-)

Our camera was unfortunately not good enough to take photos of this amazing sight, but there are some professional photos on the Spellbound web page. You can check them out here. Still, pictures can't do justice to what it looked like in reality. You have to go and see for yourself.

In the evening we visited the one and only pub in the village before retiring to our backpacker's lodge. Back there a 3 hour darts competition followed between the two of us, naturally accompanied by a few cold refreshment.

The next day (Sunday) we did a lot of driving. From Waitomo Caves we headed west to the coast and stopped by a few attractions on the way.

The first was the Mangapohue Natural Bridge. Basically a stream has dug through a huge piece of limestone rock leaving a "bridge" or a "ceiling" above it. Very impressive. The second was the Piripiri Caves. Wet, muddy, dangerous and exhilarating - that's the Piripiri Caves in a nutshell. Don't forget to bring your headlight and don't climb down there in your sandals. We know from experience it's not a good idea. The third was the Marokopa Falls, possibly the most beautiful waterfall we've seen so far.

Mangapohue Natural Bridge and some abseiling

The Marokopa Falls

The roads we drove on were small, narrow and winding. Truly serpentine. For those of you who know it, I can say that the road between Solf and Sundom is straight in comparison. So it took us a long time to get anywhere even though the distances were not long. In the afternoon we arrived in the small town of Kawhia. The ocean beach there had black sand like the rest of the coastline in the Waitomo area. Giigan quickly learned you shouldn't take your sandals off on a black sand beach when the sun has been out all day, because the volcanic sand gets BURNING hot.

Kawhiassa juotiin kahvia, tai sitten ei...

As we continued north along the coast we stopped at another waterfall close to Raglan. Its name was the Bridal Veil Falls and it was 55 metres high! The waterfall was very narrow and had made a large pool at the base. The whole thing looked like from an exotic fantasy and you wouldn't have been surprised to see mermaids or sirens break the surface of the pool. Maybe they were gone because of the sign warning people not to swim in it. Or maybe they WERE there, hiding in the depths, and the sign was there to prevent foolhardy swimmers from venturing in and falling prey to them...

The Bridal Veil Falls

From the falls it wasn't a long journey to Raglan, a cozy town on the shores of the Tasman Sea. The black sand beaches looked very tempting - a pity that the evening was already well on its way. However, we did enjoy a small picnic by the water before turning the car around and driving all the way back to Tauranga. Once again we had a terrific weekend with absolutely stunning weather. Invigorated, we were ready to face another week of everyday life.

As usual, MORE PICTURES with descriptions are available on Picasa behind this link.