Happy Birthday Dad!!!!

Happy brithday Dad!!! It's now your birthday in both America and New Zealand still. Since I can't text you or call, I thought blog was the next best thing! Wish you could be here in beautiful New Zealand to celebrate it. I miss you can't wait to see you! Hope you have a great day, I love you!

Volcanic Activities!

Colleen and I's final stop on our last shebang was to Wai o Tapu Geothermal Wonderland.  This was one of my absolute favorite places in New Zealand.  Rotorua sees a lot of volcanic activity so just driving down the road you can see bubbling water or random steam rising from the ground.  And it's rather smelly because of all the sulphur...

Smells aside the geothermal activity was incredible.  It was like nothing I've ever seen, and the uniqueness of it almost made it look fake! 

 ^ The above picture is called the "Artist's Pallet".  Earthquakes tilted the spring, causing mineral water to flow over the sinter encrusted flat.  It's called the Artist's Pallet because mineral deposits streak the surface and are distributed by the direction of the wind.  The cloudy yellow/green water is acid-sulphate.  The orange is Antimony/Arsenic.  Green/Yellow is sulphur/Arsenic.

Yay steam! (It was actually really smelly steam). 

 ^ The above pictures is of the "Champagne Pool".  This came about from a 700 year old explosion crater formed by a hydro-thermal eruption.  

This was one of the coolest lakes.  It looks fake! (I swear it's not).

And because Colleen and I cannot take any trips without some quirk, this entire Shire and Geothermal day was done with 0 hours and 0 minutes of sleep.  We stay in hostels, and while you do get to meet awesome people, there are some of those special people who you just will never forget because they snore so loud you feel your eardrums will burst and the whole room smells like gross breath.  I decided to try and sleep in the car, but for some reason someone from inside the hostel from inside a room kept shining a flashlight at me in the car.  It was very strange and scary so i ended up leaving the car in a hurry and at 2am officially locked the keys in the car.  I decided I'd deal with it in the morning and try and sleep in a chair in the hostel.  Unfortunately, I did not even sleep for a minute.  Needless to say, the next night I decided to pay extra to stay in a single room.  Totally worth it.  And the locked keys in the car only threw us 3 hours and $65 off (that is cheap for NZ).  

Although unfortunately this was the last trip for Colleen and I, in almost exactly a week Mom will be here and our adventure will begin! 

The Shire

After zorbing (previous post), next on our road trip adventure was a trip an hour outside of Rotorua to Matamata (aka the SHIRE)!!

The shire was all filmed on a farm.  Peter Jackson (director) spotted it when looking for sites via helicopter.  He chose it because it was secluded (Matamata is the in the middle of nowhere) and there are beautiful mountains in the distance.

 All of the hobbit holes you see are the same ones that are in The Hobbit.  After Lord of the Rings was filmed, the set was taken down.  It was only built again for The Hobbit.

 There is actually nothing inside the hobbit holes.  Most of them aren't even real doors.  There are 2 hobbit holes with doors that function and this is one of them.  Although nothing is inside, I did steal a rock for my brother so he can say he has a rock from a hobbit hole in The Shire!

This is looking up at some hobbit holes.  You might recognize this from the Lord of the Rings movie! Gandalf rides past this pond and down the narrow path you see.  Apparently, the actor hates horses and is scared of heights.  And being pulled in a carriage up these hills by some horses was apparently NOT fun for him.

 This is the bench where Bilbo and Gandalf smoke in the Fellowship of the Ring.  It's also where Biblo is sitting when Gandalf comes to visit him in The Hobbit.

 And this is Bilbo and Frodo's house! This is the only other hobbit hole that opens.  But it only opens about 4 feet deep.  This is so when they filmed, Frodo or Bilbo could open the door when someone knocked and it would look like it leads into their home.  The inside of the home was filmed in the studio, however.

 The outside of Biblo/Frodo's house

                                                          Random hobbit house.

 Where Bilbo's party was.

 Looking up toward Bilbo/Frodo's house. The tree at the top is fake.  J.R.R Tolkien drew a picture of Bilbo's house with a tree on top, so Peter Jackson made sure one was there.  Lucky for Ray, one of the fake leaves blew off and I stole it for him as well!

 This is Sam's house! 

Looking at the village! 

 Entrance to the Green Dragon 

 Inside the Green Dragon!

Oh man do I wish I could live in The Shire!

Zorbing!

Last weekend came the scary realization that Colleen and I are going to be parting ways really soon.  So, we decided to take one last road trip together before the separation anxiety set in! We packed our bags and drove 6 hours north to Rotorua!

We arrived Monday and drove straight to the zorbing site.  What is zorbing you may ask? Let me show you how I first learned about zorbing while still in elementary school:

As a little kid I remember watching this and thinking that I just HAVE to do this someday.  Funny how life turns out, and I end up in the very place it all started! 

There were a couple options, you could go just inside the giant ball or you could go with water.  The water option seemed cool, and it was the only option where we could go down together so water it was! 

It was amazingly fun.  Here are some pictures!

Stay tuned for posts about the rest of our trip!

Marlborough Sounds!

Sorry it has been so long since my last post.  I've been very busy! But amidst all this, I was able to take a trip to the top of the South Island to Marlborough Sounds!

We got there via ferry...a 4 hour ferry...but at least there was free WiFi and disney movies playing!

Saying ferry I think sends the wrong visualisation of this thing.  It was pretty much giant cruise ship.  This thing fits around 15 huge tractor trailers along with a ton of cars.  It also has bars, cafes, and a movie theatre type place.

Anyway, we got there and spent a few hours kayaking around.  I didn't have a waterproof camera, but my friend did so here is a picture she took of me kayaking:

Notice the "Ferry" in the background

That night, my favorite part of the trip, we went to a winery for a wine tasting and a super fancy dinner.  It was absolutely stunning.  We were there for sunset and I can't say it was anything less than perfect.  I'll let the pictures do the talking for me!

And then tragically my camera died right as the sun set behind the mountains before dinner.  I can't even tell you what exactly we ate.  I know we had some lobster and fancy sauces for an appetizer, steak wrapped in bacon a pretzel roll, and some other delicious mystery sauces. For dessert there was fruity sorbet.

The following day we set off on a dolphin search.  If we saw some, we could swim with them! Really fortunately, we were able to find 2 extremely endangered Hector Dolphins.  This dolphin is ONLY found in New Zealand.  Because they are so endangered, we weren't allowed to swim with them.  But they did come up to our boat and swam around! When we started the motor boat back up to head back, they didn't want us to leave.  They started jumping in and out of the water following us! It was an extremely rare happening and really awesome to see.  I couldn't quite capture them on photo because my camera died and I was using my Ipad for pictures.

Because we couldn't swim with dolphins, we decided to swim with seals! They can actually be aggressive if you approach them, but if you let them approach you they can be quite friendly! They mostly would just swim beneath me.  Here is the group in our snorkeling gear and wetsuits (which absolutely do NOT keep you warm).

The water was 50 degrees fahrenheit.  It took a while to recover. But it was worth it for these guys!