Even for first thing in the morning, the place was PACKED because everyone wanted to see the Lady Knox geyser eruption. We grabbed our front row seats by 9:30am and eagerly awaited the 10:15am eruption with hundreds of other people. They had added some soap to the water so we could see the bubbling beginning of the eruption easier, then for about 30 seconds it shot 15m into the air. It was tough to see through all of the steam, but the geologists among us loved it. Me, meh, I could take it or leave it!
We spent the rest of the sweltering hot morning wandering around the rest of Thermal Wonderland. Again, lots of neat things for the geologists, and lots of really different colours that you don't usually see anywhere else.
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| This picture doesn't capture how highlighter green that "water" really was. |
The coolest part of the whole park was Champagne Pools. It was beautiful, and surprisingly deep. The steam was even a different colour!
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| Photo credit: Ryan P |
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| Photo credit: Ryan P |
The FUNNIEST thing happened in the parking lot as we were leaving. The whole trip we had been seeing these Wicked camper vans everywhere, and Ryan R thought it would be great to get a picture of him posing with one with a Jackie Chan guy on it. So he did...but as he was posing the girl who was renting the van showed up and got into the trunk. Ryan had no idea she was there! We all had a really good laugh over it, and we did get a fantastic picture.
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| Photo credit: Kat |
We had one last picnic lunch in Kuirau Park (in the centre of Rotorura), then we packed up and did the 1 hour drive to Hobbiton. We JUST made it at 4pm before they closed, and managed to get on the 4:20pm tour. As luck would have it, we were all alone! We got on a gigantic bus, and had a private tour of the beautiful grounds.
Our guide was a young guy named Taylor who actually played one of the baby hobbits in the movie. He was really great, but despite his best efforts he couldn't keep the chinese tour group behind us from getting in our way. He also showed us the last living sheep from the movie, which was really rare to see (though easy to spot, because it has a black head). I was amazed how cool Hobbiton was, because I didn't really care about any of the movies. I couldn't get over how beautiful and adorable the gardens were, and how they thought through every detail to make it look completely believable.
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| Photo credit:Kat |
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| Photo credit:Kat |
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| Photo credit: Kat |
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| Photo credit: Ryan P |
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| Photo credit: Ryan R |
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| Photo credit: Ryan R |
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| Photo credit: Ryan R |
The grand finale of the tour was an ale or ginger beer (for the driver...me) at the tavern. They had really done a good job of it, especially because the inside wasn't in the movie so they just made it special for the tourists. I really loved all of the notices they had up on the walls. Ryan R especially loved the bathrooms and was super curious if the woman's bathroom was the same as the men's :)
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| Photo credit: Ryan R |
And with that, our last day came to a close as we headed to Opal Hotsprings for one last night in our tents. We cooked an easy dinner of soup and salad, drank more delicious wine, and Kat and Ryan brought out their Scotch as we played some final board games until 1am. Turns out, Scotch, even when mixed with water, does NOT sit well with me! Thank goodness it was our last night there, because that was way more drunk than I had been the entire trip.
The next morning we were all a little tired, so we had a slow start and didn't get everything packed up until 11am. Luckily it was a sunny morning so everything dried, and we cleaned off our tents as best we could for our international flights.
Back near the airport we had passed a super awesome pirate and dinosaur mini-putt, and since Ryan and I can never resist a good mini-putt that's how we killed some time before Kat and Ryan's flight. (On our layover back to Australia Ryan and I went back there to play the dinosaur round, that's how fun it was!)
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| Photo credit: Ryan R |
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| Photo credit: Ryan R |
Our goodbyes weren't that sad since we were going to see Kat and Ryan again at New Years back in Canada, so we dropped them off to continue their trip on the South Island, and then we headed back to our original hotel to get all of our stuff organized.
Probably the saddest goodbye was to our trusty treasure chest that held our food the entire vacation. Way more fun than a regular bin!
It was a bit complicated, because we ended up leaving all of our camping stuff at the hotel, flying to Canada, then coming back to the same hotel to pick it all up on our layover before heading back to Australia. We killed more time by going to see the second Hobbit movie in theatres and wandering around the mall before a delicious dinner and a good night sleep.
We had a really awesome trip back to Canada for Christmas. This time we mostly just saw our families, and then headed up to Sauble Beach for the annual New Years cottage party with the U of W geology crowd. I did forget never to pull over onto the shoulder in the winter in Canada, so I managed to get the rental car stuck and had to have Jeremy pull me out of the ditch. Ryan and I also picked parsnips under two feet of snow at my parent's house. We had tons of fun in the snow since it was such a novelty for us again.
On our way home we were lucky to make it out of Canada because there was a huge snowstorm that closed the airport right after we left. When we arrived in Australia after a horribly delayed flight we were exhausted and completely forgot to declare all of our camping stuff that we had picked up in New Zealand. We got a really serious talking to by the security people, but luckily we got through without a fine. Stupid mistake, since we're always really honest about what we declare, but at least they thoroughly cleaned our tent for us!
Well, those were some pretty epic posts that took me OVER TWO YEARS to finally write, but I'm so glad I did. It was really fun to relive everything, and dream of our next adventure.
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