The Final Road Trip

Cheers mates! We made it back to Auckland! Of course, there were many events, places and people along the way. The following is our story of the final road trip....our last two-three weeks in the beautiful paradise known to the world as New Zealand.
The beginning of this great voyage began in the small town of Picton, where we said farewell to the South Island. Unknown to those around us, who were taking the three hour ferry home from work, seeing family members, or also traveling, that this would be the last time we would gaze upon the majestic southern land of New Zealand. The ride was a little rocky, but they did well to distract us by providing entertainment through the means of "Mr. Bean's holiday" and "Total Recall". It was 10pm when we stepped onto the North side in Wellington. the City was dead and as we walked the lonely streets to our hostel, dreading having to carry our bags the whole way a kind stranger, who was a couch surfer host, pulled over and offered us a ride. He had seen us get off the ferry, where he had picked up his guest and noticed we were traveling on foot. Having compassion on us, he lent us a hand, which we gratefully accepted after learning who he was, of course. We were already tired from the days travels and weren't looking forward to the long walk to our destination, so we were relieved and very thankful! The Lord is good to those who love him. :) Reaching our hostel, we found our room, threw our turtle shells to the floor and plopped on the bed with a deep sigh, knowing that tomorrow we would be picking up our fellow travel mate, our home, our shelter from the rain, our freedom to explore as we wish, our car. Needless to say, we slept well that night naive to the cost that would come with this freedom.

In the morning, we looked for the bus stop that would take us to the airport, where our car awaited us. Sadly, we didn't have internet at that time so we had to figure out on our own what bus to take. The maps at the bus stops were no help. So we just started walking in the direction of the airport, hoping we would come across the right stop. We never did find the bus stop and ended up walking the whole 5 Km to the airport, which took us 2hrs, with all of our possessions on our back. We weren't too excited about walking the whole distance, however, this walk did make us appreciate our car even more and we got a perspective of Wellington we wouldn't have got before. We wouldn't have noticed the Mt. Victoria tunnel and how long it really is, or the colorful, interactive wind art along the bay. Therefore, we made the best of it! Like we always say, it's not really an adventure unless you get lost! :)

Relieved to have our car, after taking a gander at the giant Gollum fishing in the airport (so cool!) we drove over to inspect the Weta Cave located at the Weta Workshop, where most of the props, prosthetics, costumes, armor, weapons and special effects were created for the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and the Hobbit! They also helped create other movies such as: Avatar, Narnia, Tin tin, Jane and the Dragon, King Kong, etc. There are a lot of sites around Wellington where they filmed scenes for LOTR, so we drove around and checked them out. The following are the places we checked out, the path where Frodo yells for the other Hobbits to get of the road, the spot along the river where the Fellowship launched from Lothlorien, the gardens of Isengard, and Rivendell.

In Blenheim, we made friends with someone who had friends near Bulls, which is two hours north of Wellington, that he got in contact with for us to visit. We called them up and they were happy to have us stay. They were celebrating the Passover that night and invited us to come up that day to celebrate with them. We graciously accepted and made our way up, weaving through a narrow, steep "detour" through a mountain pass. Thankfully, we made it alive! They were a home school family with five children of which four were still at home. Helen and Phil and their children were very welcoming and their oldest son, David, offered to take us to Mt. Egmont the next day to explore different waterfalls and such (side note: this is the mountain that acted as Mt. Fuji in "the Last Samarai"). We pleasantly woke up that day to breakfast in bed, which Helen had prepared for us. This was quite the treat, for neither of us have ever been given breakfast in bed! Helen was so understanding of the life of travelers and how much one needs to take the time to rest and she made sure we took our time. After enjoying 2 wonderful nights with this family, we woke up before the sun and headed to the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. This is where Mt. Doom is located, the real name of the mountain is Mt. Ngauruhoe, but even the locals know it as Mt. Doom. Looking at the mountain, Trina said that it was the most volcanic looking volcano she had ever seen. We hiked for a couple of hours to the base of the mountain, it was a beautiful view of the valley from that point. Mount Tongariro had blown its top in November and half of the 19 km crossing was closed due to the volcanic activity. We could even see smoke coming from the dome, pretty crazy stuff there!

The next day we went to this really cool museum depicting the history of New Zealand, it was the creative design of... Weta Workshop!! There was a boat ride and everything. Then we visited the town of Stratford, where they have a glockenspiel clock, and 4 times a day Romeo and Juliet come out on the balcony and perform a scene from Shakespeare's play. The next day we drove to Taupo and picked up a hitch hiker along the way. After dropping her off at the bus station, we went to a thermal park in Taupo and soaked in the hot spring, basically all day. It was amazing! The water was so hot and then it joined the big river, which was cold, so where the two met was a nice mixture of hot water on the surface and cold underneath. We treated ourselves to some ice cream and made our way to Rotorua where we saw some more hot springs, but these smelled horrible! It reminded us of the Labyrinth and the Land Before Time, with this big, muddy, bubbly soup looking thing. That night we made our way to Cambridge, where we stayed at a Torchbearer School, which is a Christian College. We met them through a teacher from MWSB, the Bible college we attended in Montana. He was from Ravencrest, another Torchbearer School located in Colorado. They were lovely and because the next day was Sunday we attended church with them at a little country church. After saying our good-byes, we headed to Matamata, where Hobbiton is located. We were finally nearing the end of our adventure. Looking back on our trip thus far, we realized that we had journeyed through Rivendell on our quest to destroy the Ring at Mt. Doom, and finally made our way back to the Shire. It was pretty cool how the order of our travels went. Hobbiton was everything we expected and so much more! It was great to experience the Shire for ourselves, and can't wait to watch the movies again and be able to say that we have been there!

This marks the halfway point of our final road trip. In one week we made it from Blenheim to Matamata. Tune in next time for the second portion of our road trip.