The Final Countdown: Rotorua
The Tongariro Crossing was something of a bittersweet turning point for us. Not only was it at the top of our list of goals we’d created before coming to New Zealand and something we had timed our post-COVID travels around, it marked the beginning of the last phase of our mutual travels around the country. We completed the Crossing on July 3rd, and Stefan had a flight booked for July 30th to go back and start the job he’d accepted at the University of Denver.
Luckily for him, this was several weeks later than initially anticipated: he had originally calculated a month to move to Denver and find housing, but around the time we started the Abel Tasman Great Walk, his aunt had very generously offered to let him house-sit her place until it could get sold. Stefan (and Dagmar, who–spoilers!!–later joined him in Denver) have both repeatedly expressed their extreme gratitude at being able to live in such a gorgeous house rent-free, but the biggest gift of that generosity on the part of Stefan’s aunt was that the offer allowed us this final, additional month together to explore the most beautiful country either of us has ever seen. This was absolutely priceless, and looking back over our notes we kept, we wrote over and over during this period about how fortunate we were to have this extra time together. So now playing with house money, we had one last month to squeeze in everything we wanted to see together!
This had originally included the Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay regions (the east side of the North Island). In particular, Stefan wanted to visit the picturesque Mahia Peninsula to see the launch complex of aerospace company Rocket Lab:
And we so nearly made it happen! It turned out that a launch was scheduled for July 4th. Given that these typically only occur every 1-6 months, landing on that date was incredibly fortunate. Our original Tongariro Crossing plans left enough time to make the 6.5-hour drive from the mountain to the coast, explore the area, and stay in a beautiful AirBnB Stefan found right near the viewing area near the town of Wairoa, with a few days’ buffer in case the launch got delayed.
As we talked about previously, however, inclement weather delayed our trek and necessitated juggling those plans about. As we were doing this, Stefan saw a window of possibility: given the anticipated launch time, driving through the night after the hike could have had us arrive just in time to see the rocket launch. He eventually opted against this, given our penchants for driving slow and getting lost, the possibility of bad weather hiding the rocket from us, the impossibility of staying another day if the launch got delayed, and the necessity of our time-crunched itinerary requiring us to turn right around and drive straight back even if everything went off without a hitch. So, as Stefan will forever lament when any space enthusiast asks him if he got to see a Rocket Lab launch while in New Zealand, we made the right decision to nix the trip east.
(For those of you who were wondering, the rocket–ironically named “Pics Or It Didn’t Happen“–did in fact launch on time on an absolutely beautiful morning. The mission itself ended up failing to reach orbit due to a faulty electrical connector causing a premature shutdown of the second stage engine, but everything we would have seen would have looked amazing! Assuming we hadn’t slept through it…).
Instead of banking on such an unlikely chain of events, we instead decided to head north! First stop: Rotorua!
This town is typically one of the highest on traveler’s lists when visiting the North Island. Its central location makes it a good stop on the way from Auckland to Wellington, it’s a geothermal hotspot, its tourism industry offers all kinds of fun activities for travelers, and–at least prior to COVID–it was a popular point of departure for tours to the Lord of the Rings set at Hobbiton.
We, however, had already done all the above on our 2018 Christmas trip, and Stefan had actually done most twice after visiting back in 2011. Rotorua had actually been one of our favorite places on those visits: while our 2018 tour group’s stop had coincided with pouring summer rain, making for a sour day for most, we had an absolute blast. Rather than hiding from the rain, we leaned into the damp and went whitewater rafting down Okere Falls, which at 7 meters claims to be the highest commercially-raftable waterfall. We got bonus excitement after going over, as our raft flipped and sent everyone doggy-paddling to shore like drowned rats. As she got clear of the boat, Dagmar grabbed a watershoe which had gotten knocked loose in the chaos. Shouting about to find out whose it was, a bedraggled Stefan sputtered his way ashore and revealed a bare foot. Like a true Princess Charming to his waterlogged Cinderella, Dagmar had found his lost shoe! How romantic!
The second activity we did on our 2018 trip was luging. Feeling a bit like Mario Kart, there was a paved mountainside track down which you took an unpowered Go-Kart, controlling yourself with gravity, steering, and brakes. With no one else foolish enough to go to the park in such a torrential downpour, we basically had the entire course to ourselves. This, combined with all the rain making the track slick and the brakes borderline unfunctional, meant we could really rip down the course at breakneck speed.
Dagmar had a GoPro documenting all of this, but it’s a shame the audio wasn’t working, as no record remains of her panicked squeals shouting out the course’s SLOW DOWN signs to Stefan, who completely ignored her and instead let loose his inner Mad Max to barrel down the track as fast as possible. When he was gracious enough to wait for Dagmar, this was only to execute tactical PIT maneuvers in an effort to spin her out. Despite his many attempts, Dagmar kept herself on track. She did, however, show that she was perfectly capable of crashing herself, thank you very much, getting a mouthful of mud and a platter-sized thigh bruise due to poor steering when Stefan was a quarter mile too far away to blame.
Finally, our previous trips had taken us to Hobbiton. Although Stefan’s brother and sister-in-law unfortunately had a terrible day between the crummy weather and a multi-hour trip delay with their trip from Rotorua, we had visited from Auckland with Stefan’s parents on a gorgeous day shortly after arriving.
The set had expanded substantially since Stefan first visited in 2011: the filming of the Hobbit movies had required the addition of numerous hobbit-holes, the Green Dragon Inn was now fully accessible and functional, and the “Well, you came all the way out to the middle of nowhere, so I guess we’re obligated to give you a little more bang for your buck” sheep-shearing experience was nowhere to be found. The tour guides had, however, stopped handing out pieces of the set: when Stefan first visited, he was proud to take home with him a leaf from the synthetic tree above Bag End, which he won after successfully answering a trivia question about what sign (at that time missing) had hung in front of Bag End. Ever the Lord of the Rings nerd, Stefan knew it was “No Admittance Except on Party Business” (a sign which repeat viewings of the movies in his formative years incidentally taught him how to properly spell ‘admittance’).
Lord of the Rings tourism is obviously a big New Zealand draw for those of us who fell in love with the movies, and as is the case with other locations, Hobbiton goes to show that the beautiful landscapes presented in the films were not just smoke and mirrors. This is not a situation where you have to stand at one particular location and look at just the right angle and you can just barely make out a slight resemblance; you can actually stroll up and down the paths of all of Hobbiton and if it weren’t for closer inspections revealing plastic vegetables and non-functioning doors, you would swear that people really live there. Out of all the filming locations throughout the country, this is the one that most feels like you are walking into Middle Earth, so if you ever visit and are looking for that experience, Hobbiton would be our top recommendation!
With all that excitement in previous years, we decided to make Rotorua a temporary stopover to stretch our legs on the way to the coast rather than spending an entire night there.
One of the activities we had opted out of in 2018 was Zorbing, a unique New Zealand attraction where you roll down a hill (and sometimes over unsuspecting passersby) in a giant hamsterball; for added fun, they’ll even fill the interior with water so you can slip and slide around as you careen down the hill. As a classic New Zealand activity, this was something we kept telling ourselves we should do at least once, and Rotorua was the place to do it. We drove over to the site and got in line, and moments from purchasing our tickets, we decided that $100 per person for ~3 minutes of wet entertainment on a windy winter day was not ultimately worth it. So instead, we laid out on some beach recliners with the intention of watching others have their fun. Soon afterwards, the cold got to us and we decided to move on!
The main event of our Rotorua stopover was a delightful little scavenger hunt that Dagmar found. Starting at a pretty half-timbered museum, the tour took us around a well-manicured croquet lawn patrolled by long-legged pukeko, a small carnival near the water, and part of the downtown area.
This ended up being the perfect stop to stretch our legs and learn a little about the town. We finished up with some delicious dumplings from a local eatery street where we had eaten Christmas Eve back in 2018, and then were back on the road to our next destination!
Given the briefness of our time in Rotorua, we had originally planned to include that next destination in this blog post, but evidently had more to say about Rotorua than we thought! The good news is that means a fair chunk of our next entry is already written, so stay tuned for that soon!
In the meantime, thank you as always for reading! With Rotorua being the tourist attraction it is, feel free to leave a comment about any ‘adventure’ sports you’ve tried on vacation (ziplining, Zorbing, go-karting, etc.) or about any movie sets you were excited to visit! Until next time 🙂