LOTR Sites, Rotorua, and Wellington
August 2007 Mid-Semester Break

Monday, August 27 – Auckland-Hamilton, Matamata
Hamilton-Rotorua

Morning
Our trip started well-enough, despite the morning annoyance on packing the car with our stuff for the week, tidying just enough, and stopping by the library to pick up some books - which didn’t work out because the library was closed for renovations. The weather was very promising - nothing but clear skies and mild, slightly breezy, weather.

Afternoon
We stopped in Hamilton, which is about an hour and a half from Auckland, for lunch at the Chinese Healthy Vegetarian Restaurant. The pay-by-weight buffet meal for both of us was only $10 total! What a steal! We were quickly back on the road, heading to nearby Matamata, where Hobbiton was filmed. The area around the small town of Matamata is incredible - rolling hills, and a general pleasant vibe. . . exactly what you’d expect of the area if you’ve seen the LOTR trilogy, actually. It started getting really windy here and and rather cloudy. The tours of a private farm where meager remains of the filming site, essentially just round doors cut out of the hills with a few signs around, cost at least 50 NZD. Needless to say, we passed on the tours and instead enjoyed what we could see for free.

Evening
We stopped by The Indian Star restaurant for dinner before heading to the hotel. The restaurant isn’t entirely vegetarian but has quite a few veg and vegan options. We ordered a After looking online for hours (days?) before leaving Auckland, and finding only more expensive and not as good hotels available, we found a great deal at Ibis (part of the Accor Hotel group. This particular location is on the high end of the 3-star hotel range), which is on the street facing Lake Rotorua for only $68! When we were in Rotorua in January we stayed at a YHA which was very loud, dirty and poor value all around, for around $65! The double room we got with 2 beds was really quiet, had comfy beds and some fun movies (The Sisterhood of Travelling Pants and Benchwarmers) on TV that we watched that night. We had a really good sleep.

Tuesday August 28 –Rotorua-Wellington

Morning/Afternoon
We spent all day (6.5 hours or so) driving from Rotorua to Wellington. It was Greg’s 27th birthday today, but the drive wasn’t a great way to spend it - good thing we like to celebrate birthdays for a whole week!

Evening
We were both extremely hungry so decided to try to find the one listed vegetarian restaurant in nearby (to Wellington) Palmerston North, but it ended up not having any take-aways, just expensive natural food items, so we pushed on to Wellington. We got into Wellington just as the sun was setting over the ocean, the sight of which was the highlight of the day. I thought Auckland was a pain to drive around/through, but Wellington is far, far worse! Poor signs, too many unmarked one-way streets, hardly any street signs and more make it nearly impossible to drive in New Zealand, yet it is also impossible not to drive, since public transportation practically doesn’t exist and places are so remote and spread out that there is no other option than to drive. We finally found a place to park (for free) while we tried to find Aunty Mena’s Vegetarian Restaurant. I am so glad we found this place! It is really well-located, on Cuba St. (so what’s the deal with this? What is Wellington’s connection with Cuba of all places? There’s Cuba street, Cuba Arcade, Cuba district etc etc...why?) in the centre of the CBD and has reasonably priced Chinese food meals as well as some Malaysian dishes. We stayed at the Nomads backpacker’s lodge while in Wellington. Orbitz had a special for $50 off when booking for 2 or more nights and this was the only hotel in our price range even with the discount. Wellington is an even more expensive city than Auckland, it seems. We paid about $60 or so total for each night. We had our own bathroom, which was nice, but the place was very noisy and the kitchen was disgusting so we tried not to hang around too much.

Wednesday August 29 - Wellington

Morning
We had the organic vegan pop tarts and the french press coffee we brought with us for breakfast, then headed out into the city. We took the cable car up to the top of a mountain where the botanical gardens and the Victoria University are. The view was pretty nice and the cable car was cheap but overall I was mostly unimpressed. Wellington is a poor man’s San Francisco - lots of hills but nothing much to see or do. Auckland seems to want to be LA but Wellington seems to wish it were Texas. Very odd.

Afternoon
We went to Aunty Mena’s again for lunch, this time having a delicious Malaysian coconut soup with dumplings and such in it, as well as some shanghai noodles with tofu. The meal came to under $30. Food in New Zealand is generally expensive and not worth close to the price one must pay, but this place’s meals are the exception! The meals cost the same as a sidewalk falafel but are much more filling and delicious. Although this isn’t saying much, Aunty Mena’s food is the best I’ve tasted in this country! After we had our fill at the restaurant, we went to The Empress theatre to purchase tickets to a movie for the evening. The Empress Theatre is where the LOTR movies were filmed for the Australasian premieres as well as the world premiere for the last movie. The Theatre has been beautifully restored to it’s former glory, or so we are told. It really is a spectacular theatre. The tickets are about the same price as other over-priced NZ theatres, but the experience is much better!

After we purchased our tickets we went to the Te Papa museum. I must say that the museums in New Zealand are genuinely spectacular! I thoroughly enjoyed spending a few hours looking at the exhibits on all 6 floors of this amazing museum! Oh! and unlike anything else in this country, this museum is entirely free! They don’t pressure you into donating like the Auckland museum does!

Evening
I really enjoyed seeing the Bourne Ultimatum at the Embassy! I haven’t seen any of the others but this last move in the trilogy is so good! We mostly had the theatre to ourselves, which was an added bonus, plus had great seats. We would have seen another movie at the theatre had something other than The Simpsons been playing (already seen it at home). We tried to go to Aunty Mena’s again because I couldn’t stop thinking about the delicious soup, but it was closed for the night. Our room at the hostel was even noisier than the previous night so we asked to switch rooms. The sound coming from beneath our beds was akin to that which resonated from within the well when the Fellowship went into the mines of Morea.

Thursday August 30 - Wellington-Rotorua. Many LOTR sites.

Morning
We parked our car in the lot next to the Hostel for $32 for the 2 days we were in the city. Crazy. We went to a vegetarian cafe for some breakfast (gross! makes me remember why I hate breakfast out. Scrambled tofu with some kind of tomato stuff? 2 little pancakes with nuts in them? what a rip-off!), stopped by Mt. Victoria where the famous “Get off the Road!” scenes and others were shot for LOTR, then left the city.

Afternoon
Many scenes from the LOTR trilogy were shot around Wellington. Unfortunately, many of them are only accessible by helicopter or are on private land, like Lothlorien. We saw many areas where shooting had taken place while we drove, but stopped to see Isengard (not the tower part, which was shot on the South Island, but the gardens, the uprooting of Fangorn Forest and other scenes) and Rivendell. We passed by Minas Tirith but there wasn’t much to see. I really enjoyed the short hikes around Rivendell.

Evening
We stayed at Ibis again since we had had such a great experience before. This time we had a room on the 4th floor so got to see the distant mountains and a bit of the Lake from the windows. We watched both Four Brothers and The Da Vinci Code in the hotel room and went to The Indian Star again.

Thursday August 31

Morning/Afternoon
We couldn’t have asked for better weather today! It was clear and beautiful - perfect for visiting some thermal activity sites! We first went to Waiumonga, about 25km away from Rotorua. It costed $25 each for us to walk/hike for about 1.5 hours around a spectacular area. Next we went to Wai-o-Tapu for additional volcanic formations. I can’t really begin to describe it, but I've put up some pictures.

There are also many more pictures in the galleries below:

bigger pics of LOTR sites (not as many as the thumbnails below)

Best of the week:

-Museum in Wellington
-Aunty Mena's Veg. Restaurant
-listening to music in the car on my ipod
-being warm. It was nice to have rooms with heaters especially since most home in this country don't have central heating, including our industrial drafty loft
-Watching the Bourne Ultimatum at the Embassy Theatre in Wellington

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