We booked a small group tour of Te Puia geothermal site and the movie set of Hobbiton. The port of Tauranga is a beautiful half moon harbor with Mount Maunganui at the end (where residents are supposed to go in case of tsunami).
We drove through the forests of the Mamaku Ranges to Rotorua, where we entered the Te Puia geothermal site, which contains exhibits of Maori culture as well as the largest geyser in the southern hemisphere. We watched a Maori welcome ceremony and toured a craft school where Maori learn carving and weaving skills. This woman demonstrated how to use a shell to strip the flax plant exterior to reveal fiber that is used to make rope and baskets.
The carving school was also amazing. We saw a great example of a ‘walker,’ the canoes the Maoris used to travel between islands.
In Te Puia, see the famous Pohutu (means constant splashing in maori) geyser (largest in southern hemisphere, erupts 1-2 per hour, sometimes 100 feet). We were lucky enough to catch its eruption.
The Maori use the fumeroles to cook meals. They lower baskets of food into the boiling water.
There are also mineral rich mud baths that the Maori used to heal wounds.
The curative powers of the baths were exploited by the British, who set up spas in the 1880s, the most famous of which is the Bath House in the Government Gardens situated on the lake’s edge in downtown Rotorua.
The Maori people gifted 50 acres of this land to the crown “for the benefit of the people of the world”. In 1908 the New Zealand government opened a large and elaborate bath house, built in the Elizabethan Tudor style of architecture.The geothermal activity of the area was clear when we saw steam rising from beneath the fence in a suburb.
Out guide said geysers had erupted in the middle of the lake and in a mall parking lot.
After leaving Te Puia, we drove for another hour to reach the Shire, the set for the Hobbit movies. The original Shire was constructed of sytrofoam and was demolished after filming the Lord of the Rings. However, it was rebuilt to film the Hobbit movies and turned into a tourist farm, which is the tourist attraction in New Zealand. It is not cheap ($84), but it did not disappoint. They schedule twenty people at a time on the two hour walking tour of the Shire, so you never feel crowded and you never have trouble getting photos.There are over 40 hobbit houses on site, all elaborately decorated with flowers. There are no interiors since the set was only used for exterior shots.
I’m going to include a ton of shots because every Hobbit house was so photogenic, it’s hard to choose.
Bilbo Baggin’s house is one of the most famous.
Sam Wise Ganges’ house
At the end of the tour, we had a complimentary drink at the Green Dragon (stout for us).
On our way back to Tauranga, we drove through the breathtaking Kaimai Mountains in Waikato.