Day Thirteen and Fourteen: Taupo to Auckland

Man Boo and I were quickly coming to grips with the fact that our vacation was rapidly coming to a close.  There was a lot to see on the North Island, but we opted to call some audibles on our itinerary and re-routed ourselves a bit so that we could go to Waitomo Caves (glowworms!) and then do an ultra-touristy trip to Hobbiton.

I couldn't take pictures while we were in Waitomo Caves for obvious reasons (it needs to be super-dark in there to appreciate the glowworms) but here's a professional picture so that you can get the idea. It was like that, but less blue.

This ended up being another one of my trip favorites.  It was a very touristy thing to do, but it's popular for a reason.  It's pretty spectacular.  At one point we were floating down an underground river in pitch darkness, we turn a corner and suddenly GLOWWORMS. 

 In the same vein, Hobbiton was also surprisingly fun. For most of the trip we hadn't planned on going, but as we started getting closer to it, Jamie started to mention that we could try it. It wasn't until we missed out on a chance to go on Day 12 (they were sold-out) and Jamie was genuinely disappointed, that we realized that we needed to get there before we flew back,  Just think about all of the campy pictures we would have missed out on!

For those who don't know (I'm looking at you mom and dad), Hobbiton is a movie set used in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies. It was built as a temporary set for the LOTR and when they went back to rebuild it for the Hobbit, the farmer upon whose land it was located stipulated that they must build it to be more permanent and maintain it.  A savvy farmer.  So now it's a fully-functioning farm (mostly for sheep/wool) and a cash cow (no pun intended) of a tourist attraction. 

(It's Bag End!)

(Sam's house...and also the final shot of the entire LOTR trilogy)

As a little bonus, the ticket included a free pint at The Green Dragon so we enjoyed a nice drink and a scone to finish out our mini-adventure.

Then, we had to pack up our things (including several boxes of Tim Tams) and headed to Auckland to catch an evening flight back home. Three things I learned from this trip:

1) New Zealand has such fascinating geological history. It was originally part of Gondwana Land so parts of the South Island looked just like the rainforests of South America. But, at the same time, the huge tectonic shifts created these big mountains and it's far enough south that it can get quite cold.  So you'll have rainforest-like jungle juxtaposed with snow-covered mountains in the same view.  

2) New Zealand only has one truly native mammal which is a type of bat. Most of the other quintessential New Zealand fauna are birds because they somehow made the journey to New Zealand thousands and thousands of years ago from elsewhere. Many of those birds (like the now extinct Moa and the Kiwi) became flightless after a time on New Zealand since there were no mammalian predators.  The only reason the bat survived as a native mammal was because at some point, New Zealand was largely underwater which wiped out most of the land-based mammals that originally lived on the New Zealand chunk of Gondwana.

3) It was way harder to get my head on straight coming back from New Zealand than it was flying to New Zealand. We left Auckland on Saturday evening, but got back to San Francisco on Saturday afternoon.  For the next two weeks, I kept on thinking we were a day ahead.

And of course, the best way to end a trip across the world is to have a layover in San Francisco to see the family...

(Riley showing Tio the new hammock)

While the nieces didn't seem fazed by the beard Tio had sprouted after almost two weeks, I kind of liked it...