Thursday July 4
Good sleep again last night, woken by the rain a couple of times but was a nice relaxed feeling. We had a fairly leisurely get up, usual routine plus some extra sweeping of the van before setting of for 9am. We saw a honey centre which we decided to stop off at which turned out to be a nice little 20 minute or so stop. They had the whole back wall as a live honey bee wall where you could see what they were all doing, kind of like an ant farm if that makes sense. You could see the queen in there and all the workers doing stuff and the honey combs. It was very interesting with some facts in the walls, that kind of thing. There were also lots of products you could buy made with the honey from candles to face creams. We sampled lots of types of honey, including the big honey comb you can get, and all the honeys from their different bee hives that they get feeding from different plants. They even had honey with fruit mixed in and liquers, different to anh honey we have ever had before. We ended up buying some Manuka Honey in liquid form so it was straight from the hive of the bees feeding on Manuka. Apparantly Manuka is a native plant with lots of medicinal properties, and although it can be grown elsewhere the lady in the shop said they can't seem to get it to have the same properties as you can when growing it on its native soil.
Drove down past Auckland and over the harbour bridge, stopping off at a town called Thames to try and find a charger for one of the cameras but no luck. We had a hot drink in a cafe and had 20 minutes or so to catch up on fb plus try and find somewhere to stay overnight because we didnt want to have the same thing happen again as lastnight.
On the drive to hot water beach we saw lots of rolling hills that i thought looked just like hobbit hills, Liam disagreed and felt they were more like Tellytubby hills. There were lots of farm lands and rickety houses and we drove through miles and miles of forest covered in a layer of cloud and mists. When we arrived it was to find the tide had come in and was covering the hot area so couldn't do it. We were so disappointed we had driven so far and not able to do it but made the most of it and went for a walk down it as well as taking the opportunity to take some silly photos.
Driving towards Hamilton got us views of what I'd like to call mountains but I suppose they were more like big pointy hills, covered in long tall trees. There were some covered in trees strewn all the way over like match sticks with eagles flying over. Unfortunately being in the van and the nature of the roads means we often miss things with the camera.
We decided we wanted to take route that would cover more beach areas to try and find fish and chips. We stopped off in a sea side kind of town with a very bizarre public toilet with one of those voice overs saying you had to press a button to close the door and lock it. It then said something like "the door is now locked. You have 10 minutes before the door will unlock" then played some weird smooth jazz music. I don't think I've ever peed to jazz before but it made me hungry for chips anyway! Luckily we went to a nearby fish and chip shop and ate our chips in the van with the birds going mental for them outside.
More driving down towards Hamilton with rainbows and bright orange skies before staying at a powered site with a bit of wifi for the evening.
Friday July 5
This morning we drove to matamata for 9am, it was about 45 minutes from where we were staying. We went through lots of rolling hills and farmland to get to the hobbiton set, it really is nestled in the middle of rural New Zealand. Once we got there we had a cup of tea in the shire cafe whilst waiting for our tour to begin. We loved the bus that cane for us because it had "special" written on the front. We so wanted some photos of us acting like retards in the windows but there were a few too many people for it to be ok!
The set used to be fake and was all taken down originally, but due to more films being made and also the tourist opportunities they re-built it from real materials.
Peter Jackson had already found areas for other parts of hobbiton and was only looking for the baggins party area when flying over, but he fell in love with the area and made all of hobbit on there in the end. The new zealand army was hired to build road to it and contracts and agreements were signed.
Once in hobbiton it was just like walking into a different world, the detail was just astounding. The next few paragraphs are going to be very mixed up and not in any order, just as I remember things.
Moss and growths on the fences looked real but we were told it had made artificially using yoghurt and paint, the wood soaked in vinegar to give it an old look...that kind of detail everywhere. They didnt like the look of the local sheep here, they felt they looked too modern and groomed so they imported suffolk sheep from England with the black faces. They also had an "animal kingdom" over the hill with all of their on set animals, also with doubles with full time vets and handlers. There were also people hired to keep a look out for native birds to make sure none of them flew into the area to get into any shots, peter jackson didnt want anything that didnt look authentically english in the filming. we were told in one scene you can hear a native bird call but he kept it in because he liked the sound. English plants had been imported to make it look more like a "shire". The tree over bilbos house for lord of the rings was chopped down from somewhere down the road because it looked right, branches numbered and then all put back together again. The one there now is completely artificial for the hobbit film, due to it being set 60 years before they wanted it smaller. The leaves have been imported from taiwan and individually attached. 10 days into filming they wernt happy with the colour so took them all off to be sprayed. You really wouldnt know it wasnt real if you wernt told, the detail is out of this world.
There are different hobbit holes to different scales depending on how close or far filming, some are 60% to scale, others 90% and so on. The very small ones are used to film children in front of to look like adult hobbits.
There are full time gardeners employed there keeping the grass lovely and green all year round, general maintenance and growing vegetables still. There are lots of different sized oddly shaped ones all around that we thought were props but are grown for the set.
We were shown to different hobbit holes belonging to different characters, most only go in about a meter, just one has an interior- bilbo baggins. And even that isn't a fully functional looking hole there's just more of a hole than the others really and they do it all up when filming. We walked around the hobbiton village, and the guide pointed out areas and what was filmed in certain parts. There were all sorts of props around making it feel lived in, washing lines with clothes, gardening tools etc.
They had a man during filming who's job it was to go round each chimney and keep them smoking by lighting bees wax in the top. She said it took so long to do that it was a constant job because by the time he got back to the start it was it again. There were also cast dressed as hobbits going back and forth doing washing from the washing lines constantly during filming to make them look like they really were being used and not just a prop. They still have washing on lines now that is washed every other day to keep fresh for visitors.
Many of the children filmed there were the children of people on-set because it was easier than finding other children and the chemistry on camera was better.
We saw a cat lounging outside Sams hobbit hole, she was picked up by a gardener when they saw it being thrown from a car on the way to work. She was a kitten and has lived in hobbiton ever since. Staff are eagerly waiting to see if its in the background of any of the new hobbit films. Which reminds me that we saw some parts of the set which were built for the new hobbit films so not been seen on any films yet.
We took a walk through some lovely forested areas until we got to the green dragon pub. The bridge is now a real one made of stone, and you walk over it past a wonderful little building with a working water mill. The Pub is amazing, lots of little quirky things inside, posters, pictures, little pipes, books. Its all built to last now, where as before it was only temporary and actually got burnt down for real when it burnt down in the film. We got to look around and try a free drink, options were different ales and cider all brewed locally just for the green dragon, nowhere else has them. I had a cider and liam had ginger ale. We also bought a biscuit and muffin to share whilst sat inside which was great, best biscuit I've ever had! We then walked through the gardens and had a last look at hobbiton over the river before boarding the bus again back to the starting point.
After having a short browse through the shop we decided to drive to waitomo. It took a little over an hour and once there we decided to book onto a caving tour. We knew we wanted to do some black water rafting and see the glow worms so we opted for something with a mixture. During the time we had to wait to nipped into the kiwi house down the road, which is basically a little conservation type organisation for native birds. We saw some kiwis up close being fed which was extraordinary because they are so odd looking. They're kind of big round balls with legs and a head on the end with a really long thin beak, very strange. We watched the big eels being fed after that which again was interesting because the lady was telling us a few facts about them as she fed them. They live for 100 years or more and when they're ready to breed they change colour,then swim down any waterway they can find until they reach the pacific. Then they swim thousands of miles to go and mare , lay thousands off eggs then die of exhaustion. the new eels then make the journey back to new zealand to live their adult lives before doing the same. Liam fed some little parakeet type things in the aviary and we just had a small walk around before heading back for our caving adventure.
It turned out it was just us 2 for the trip, the max size for the company we were with was 6 but with it being winter they're not getting many through at the moment. It was better for us because it was like having our own personal experience and we got to do more because it took less time.
We drove in the van about 20 mins down the road, through bumpy fields, past more cows and to a series of sheds. Once there we got into our wet suits, caver wellies and helmets as well as our climbing gear. We drove a little further down so we were closer to the cave entrance before having a practice on a sloped hill with our lines and how to use then to go down and abseil into the cave.
I went first, liam second and our guide third, it was great. We abseiled down 27 meters into a chasm filled with shin deep water before walking into the pitch black caves carrying our big rubber rings. Most of the time we had our torches on because it was pitch black, and the water sometimes reached hip height if not deeper in some areas. As we were walking upstream we started seeing little lights on the ceiling,then more and more. We stopped on a stone hill and sat in the rings, turned the lights out and WOW what a slight. It looked like we were in the middle of nowhere on a hill or something looking at the night sky. There were stars everywhere, all over the ceilings and on the walls. Glow worms! We sat for a while allowing our eyes to adjust to the dark and so the lights would seem a bit brighter. At one point the guide banged very loud all of a sudden and they went a bit brighter. He said it tricks them into thinking there is something in there to eat so they glow brighter to attract insects. Insects go into the cave, get lost and when they see the glow worms think its the sky so go upwards and get eaten. The glow worms stay as worms for around 9 months before going into a cocoon, emerging as a fly. The flies only live around 5 days because they have no stomachs and starve to death! Their soul purpose is to mate and lay eggs. When the eggs start to hatch only a small amount survive because the ones that hatch first start eating the other eggs. Their glow is in their bums, and usually during the day they turn their glow off to conserve energy but they don't really need to do that in the caves.
After a while we walked further and got to another cavern which was lower. We got to go up close to the glow worms and get a really good look. They're literally worms perhaps on average about 2cm long and thin. They have an almost greeny circular glow that kind of ripples up and down as they move kind of like worms. They spin a silky kind of web around where they live only it's not a web it hangs from the ceiling in strands. We touched one and it was really sticky and kind of elastic and strong! We also saw so much beautiful golden/silver glowing and sparkling everywhere with the torches which turned out to be all their eggs over the ceiling. Up close it was kind of amber ish in appearance and pretty. Some caverns had more in than others, without the torch it was pitch black so you couldn't even see your hand in front of your face, in some of the caverns the light of the glow worms lit the place up enough for you to see things which was so amazing.
We spent a couple of hours exploring down there, we drank from some water dripping from the ceiling that had travelled through the limestone 40 odd meters, we climbed through tiny tunnels for fun and went down stream on the tubes which was really fun! We saw an area where two different areas of tectonic plate were above our heads. Stand on one side youre on the australia plate, another side you're on the pacific! ( My geography lacks a little so that might be wrong) Sometimes we had the torches on, other times we were in pitch black, other times we were surrounded by glowing lights, it was amazing. We also had a break where we stopped for a flask of hot drink and some chocolate which was a nice touch. We didnt even realise how cold and tired out we were until we stopped for a rest.
We eventually reached the start again, by that time it was almost 7pm and pitch black. We still had a rock climb to do up the chasm to get out! Before we did that we turned off our torches one last time and oh my god what a surprise. We had been there in the day light but at night the glow worms were out and they were all over the wall, imagine 27 meters of cliff face each side covered in glowing lights, stunning.
We took turns heading up the rock, the guide first to hold the line, then me, then once I was up it was Liam's turn.
Once back at the huts we had showers then went back to the office where we had soup whilst viewing the few photos he had taken of us down there.
By 8pm we were parking up for the night hoping to manage an earlyish night ready for the day after.
