More New Zealand Highlights

North Island Part 2

New Zealand is the place to go to check off items on any bucket list... and that we did!

We stopped at Hobbiton on our way to Rotorua. Louis, our guide, shared lots of fun facts.  For instance, the family who owns the property has thousands of sheep.  But not one of those sheep appeared in any of the movies.  Every morning that there was going to be filming at Hobbiton, the family had to move all the sheep off of all the surrounding hills so they wouldn't get into a camera shot!

The inside of the Bilbo's hobbit hole isn't anything, just about a meter and a half of an empty wooden closet.  The actual interior of filming was in a studio in Wellingon, a few hours away.   

We made it down to Rotorua, an area famous for hot springs, mud baths, and geo-thermal parks.  We also found a red-wood forest.  It's not natural... the trees were imported from America.  But it was still awesome to see the monstrous trees scraping the sky.  We took a little hike to enjoy the fresh cool air.  

If you're familiar with the All Blacks, the NZ rugby team, you'll know that their icon is a silver fern leaf.  Here's one of those ferns just beginning to open up.  The greenery in New Zealand was interesting.  Looking out at a forest from the road, it looks like a tropical forest, with palm trees shooting up.  But upon a walk through the woods, you realize it's completely fern covered.  Those palm trees seem to be giant ferns rising above the rest of the forest.  It was such an interesting mash up of vegetation.

We went to Waitomo caves, the most famous place for glow worms.  Glow worms are only found in New Zealand and a few places in Australia.  They live in dark caves and feed on other bugs that manage to fly in. The reason why they glow is that their poop ends up hanging from the walls and ceilings of the caves, and it glows.  So this magical sight is nothing but a fascinating bodily function. Nevertheless, the hours we spent crawling through tiny holes in muddy caves, laying on tubes to look up at thousands of glow worms, and swimming through frigid underground rivers was an awesome first caving experience, one that I would gladly repeat!

The guides at the tubing company suggested a drive up a windy mountain road to get to some beautiful gems. These less crowded, hidden gems had few travelers and we were able to explore this corner of creation for a little while.

One of the highlights of the trip was sky diving in Taupo.  It took three days before the weather finally cooperated enough to let us go up.  We suited up, crawled into the plane, flew 1200 feet into the air, hooked onto our instructors, and then jumped out of the plane.  We spent forty-five seconds free falling, the air drying out my mouth as soon as I opened it to scream, my toes freezing in my Chacos from the cold of the altitude, the sound of the wind screaming in my ears, and the mountains and lake spinning below us.  When the parachute finally opened, the silence was deafening.  I looked out at the land below as I soared through the sky, floating on air.  For about four more minutes, we peacefully fell to reach the field back at the company.  My reoccurring dream, ever since I was a kid, was flying.  And I finally did it.  And it was everything I dreamed it would be.