New Zealand Part 3

Thursday, December 7, 2007

We woke up on Thursday to rain. As we learned later, there is an expression in New Zealand, “Four seasons in one day.” Apparently the weather never stops changing. We packed up our things and left the sulfur trailer for the last time sometime between six and seven in the morning. We went to McDonald’s for breakfast because our kids needed to play somewhere, and where else can you go for a play place at seven in the morning in the rain? After breakfast and some play time, we all headed north to Matamata.

Matamata is the site where Peter Jackson filmed the Hobbiton scenes from the Lord of the Rings. Ryan and Mason (with Katie occasionally listening in) spent the past year reading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings together at bed time, so going to Hobbiton was one of the anticipated parts of being in New Zealand. It was also something that we knew would not be a fun thing to bring Andrew along with. So Amy took Andrew to the Laundromat to get some laundry done, assuming that she would be able to find something to do in Matamata with Andrew while she waited for us after the laundry. Nope. Matamata has Hobbiton and nothing else. So Amy spent her time entertained with a clothes dryer that didn’t work, the consequential wet clothes, and a little boy who entertained himself playing in a mud puddle. Ah, the joys of vacation!

Hobbiton, it turns out, is the only scene from the Lord of the Rings movies where New Line Cinema did not take down all of the scenes. It also happens to be on a sheep farm. This meant that the grounds were littered with what the tour guide called “Hobbit droppings.” So while it was educational and fun in many ways, it also turns out that Ryan spent much of his time listening to Mason and Katie talk about how disgusting the hobbit droppings were and complaining about how hard it was to avoid stepping on them. The kids did like to look inside the hole for Bag End, though, and Ryan got to do the “Frodo Bop” under the party tree. In the end it was a fun thing to have done, and the new Zealand countryside is so gorgeous that almost anything you do has the benefit of incredible scenery at a minimum.

We left Matamata and drove to Aukland, wondering what we would do when we got there. Prior to the end of the tour, Ryan got into a conversation with the Hobbiton tour guide and asked him, “What should we make sure we do not leave New Zealand without doing?” He thought about it for quite a number of seconds, and finally said, “Have you done the Zorb?” He then started talking about amusement parks, and how the ones in the States are better anyways. We gathered from this and other experiences that you really need to have some kind of “in” if you want to have a cultural experience in New Zealand. Apparently, much of the draw of New Zealand is the countryside and the adventure sports. Although there are many trappings of Maori culture strewn about here and there, they do not seem to have a lot of effect on daily life.

In Auckland we got some food. At some point during our time in New Zealand, Katie discovered the power windows in the back seat of the car. As Ryan and Amy tried to navigate directions through Auckland, unbeknownst to them, Katie started holding her beloved “Turtwig” stuffed animal out her window. (If you do not know who Turtwig is, you clearly have not been keeping up on your Pokemon characters.) Suddenly, our struggles to understand where we were going were interrupted by Katie screaming, “Turtwig!!” followed by Mason yelling, “Mom! Dad! Katie dropped Turtwig out the window!” We pulled over, and Ryan jumped out of the car, running back through a main street of Auckland, New Zealand like Frogger of old time video game fame, looking for Turtwig in the middle of the street. As Ryan approached Turtwig, a car drove over the stuffed animal, but being a resilient little Pokemon, Turtwig survived with only tire track scars. Ryan and Amy instituted a new rule that the windows would remain closed from that point forward.

After rounding up our food, we went to a farm with a train and a playground. The farm animals were entertaining to the kids for a while, but the train and the playground were underwhelming, especially because the playground was filled with dirty puddles. Andrew was bordering on uncontrollable, so we gave it up and went back to the hotel. This turned out to be a good move. Although it was raining and the outdoor swimming pool was too cold to play in, the rain made the outdoor hot tub warm instead of hot, and so the five of us played together in a small outdoor hot tub in the rain for the a half hour or so before settling down for the night. That may have been the favored activity of the day.