Hobbiton

I'm finding it difficult to find time to post our adventures while on the road! More often than not, our internet connection is poor, and most of the time we don't have spare time!

The drive to Hobbiton from Whangamata was the most beautiful countryside I've ever seen. The rolling hills dotted with grazing sheep or cows, rock formations and hedges separating land is like England with a slight tropical twist. The windy roads are usually empty. They say there are more sheep than people in New Zealand. That seems to be true after several days of driving! I love it!

We saw a horizontal rainbow (we named it a "rainrod") that was impossible to capture through a rainy window, but it was absolutely magical.

The location for the Shire in the Hobbit movies was spotted from a helicopter. It has all of the elements of J.R.R. Tolkien's book. It was, and continues to be, an enormous sheep farm.

After Lord of the Rings was filmed, the shire was taken down. Later in preparation for the Hobbit, it took took two years to create the movie set, and all filming was done in twelve days! Afterward, the producer and sheep farmer started a business together, the producer owning the set, the farmer owning the land, and began tours. It is packed every day.

I'm going to share way too many pictures, but believe it or not, there are hundreds of charming and delightful details I'm not including! Oh, it was hard to look at it all hard enough!

Two pictures of the hobbit house below, because this is the one I would choose to live in...

Dozens of "extra" homes were built just in case the camera happened to catch one.

The gardens and paths were so imaginative. It transported us to an idyllic and mystical place, and we tried to figure out how we could live in such a setting!

Bilbo Baggins home!

The tour ended at the Green Dragon Inn where we all got a home-brewed ginger beer.

And the best sight of the whole day...

This was a pricey outing and we wondered if it would be worth it. It was worth every penny!

Whangamata

Pronounced FungamutAH, this little beach town has been so perfect for our month away doing nothing. With school back in session, the town seemed mostly empty, except for on the weekends when a minimal surge happened on the beach. Apparently it grows by 60,000 in December and January, and there is an event next weekend that brings in 100,000 visitors! Glad we'll miss that!

It has its quirks. Everything closes, except maybe two restaurants, at 3:00PM, maybe 2:30 if the owner feels like it. A loud warning siren goes off occasionally and can be heard throughout the entire town. At first few times we thought it was a tsunami warning, but none of the locals seemed to pay heed. We finally found out that going along with a long standing tradition, any time the ambulance or police is dispatched, it rings out. It is insanely expensive. A burger costs, on average, $13, a regular pizza that isn't even that good is about $18 for a medium size. One day we googled "Mexican food" in hopes of finding some cheap tacos. It lead us to an expensive, healthy cafe that used tortillas in a few dishes. It was most definitely not Mexican! The next "Mexican" restaurant google listed was a Thai restaurant. We finally made our own tacos!

There is really only one old main street with shops and restaurants. There is always parking and cars aren't in a hurry. The pace is slow. The idea here is work enough to live well enough, and then play at the beach the rest of the time.

It is refreshing to see old, simple cottages along the beach instead of multi-million dollar mansions, although it looks as though larger homes are being built. It feels like a safe, unhurried town from long ago.

It is '"September" here, so the weather is mostly nice with unpredictable storms and wind. Right now as I type there is a cyclone hitting. Hard rain and winds. But it easily could have passed without any trouble and the weather forecast would have been totally wrong.

It has been nice to get a few items at summer sales!

The ice cream shop on the main street is run by a couple from Menton, France of all places! We became fast friends.

Our favorite things are the consistent beauty of the sunsets, riding our bikes into town, the easy access of the beach, and the slow pace. It has been amazing. Geoff says it is his favorite beach in the world so far. He has suggested we spend a month here every year. It is pretty dreamy with its mile of soft sand stretching way into the sea, the arch of the coastline, the cliffs and islands that give so much beauty and interest, and the clean water and good waves.

Today we are packing up. We're ready for the next two weeks of discovering the rest of New Zealand, and I must admit, we're ready to get back to Salt Lake and see Tennie! We've missed her every day.

So long Whangamata!

A Sunday Explore

We haven't done any exploring while here at the beach. This was purposeful. But we leave on Tuesday, and there was one place we hoped to see before moving on, and that is Cathedral Cove.

There was a branch of the church in Coromandel, a two-hour drive up the peninsula. We drove up the western coast and it was, of course, unbelievably beautiful.

Coromandel is a cute, well-preserved mining town from the late nineteenth century. The branch met in an adorable old house-turned-chapel.

We were warmly welcomed and enjoyed worshipping with these great New Zealand saints. We missed going to the little branch we had been going to on previous Sundays. Our second Sunday there, Geoff and I were called on to speak on the spot! The gave us gifts and treasured the extra faces in their small congregation. We've met a lot of wonderful members of the church here.

After church we walked down the main street of Coromandel to admire its charm.

The drive to Cathedral Cove was along a curvy, mostly dirt rode directly east. We saw a Pigs Crossing sign and soon discovered an enormous amount of pigs along the road, including dozens of piglets! The owner keeps over 70 as pets, in addition to his 20+ piglets!

Ceci was the only one willing to hold the dirty little cutie, and she nearly got pooped on, but boy was it adorable!

We stopped to see a waterfall we saw off the side of the road.

As we arrived at Cathedral Cove, we realized we were back with the tourists. It has been nice to be in our quiet, unknown-to-the-world town.

We had hoped to get here on a sunny day, but our own beach called us on sunny days! Yesterday was warm and clear all day. Geoff and the girls were out in the waves for TWELVE hours! Tonight a cyclone is going to hit, so today was our last day to make this trip. While cloudy and cool, we're so glad we made time to see this spectacular New Zealand spot.

It is about a 45 minute walk down to the beach. The walk itself was beautiful!

This is Narnia in the movie, Narnia! We got home and watched a clip on Youtube of when the children arrive in Narnia, and sure enough, it was Cathedral Cove on a sunny day (and at low tide).

We took a little shortcut on the way back to the parking lot. It was a super fun path full of ferns, limby trees, inviting rocks and knobby stumps. Ceci was in heaven. As small children, my girls would have spent hours here in a magical world created by their fertile imaginations. I had a flashback to those days and had a moment of nostalgia!

This got us excited to explore the rest of New Zealand!