Friday, June 10, 2011

New Zealand: An Epic Honeymoon - Part 1

First let me say, we knew we had picked the right place for our honeymoon when, upon entering the country and going through customs, they specifically asked us, "What kind of camping gear do you have with you?" Any country in which this is a standard question for all visitors as they cross the border is totally cool in my book.

We arrived to a beautifully gray and rainy Auckland around 9:30am. It was a long day, starting in Dallas the morning after our wedding, then flying to L.A., where Katie and Thea tag-teamed picking us up from LAX so we could go home, swap our bags out, then drive back to catch our flight. We ended up with a 2-hour delay and didn't leave until 1:30am on Monday morning. Thanks to the international dateline, we arrived this Tuesday morning - a full day later.

But, it was a smooth trip and now we're here, ready for adventure!

Right off the bat I got more of an adventure than I bargained for: thanks to leaving Jeff's driver's license in the scanner at home, I got to be the official "hirer" of the rental car, which also means I was the official driver on the trip. Normally not worth writing home about (or, in this case, blogging...), but in New Zealand they drive on the "wrong side" of the road. This puts the driver on the right side of the car, the gear-shift to your left, and oh yes - the lever for the windshield wipers is to the left of the steering wheel instead of the turn-indicator being on the left (this was a fact I reminded myself of often, as I would inadvertently make the wipers come to life as I was preparing to change lanes... oops).


I had practice driving on the right side (and remembering about those dang windshield wipers) right from the start, as we immediately left Auckland and drove 2 hours south to Matamata - home of the Alexander Family sheep farm, and "Hobbiton," the set used for filming the Shire in Lord of the Rings.

Many of the 11,000+ sheep watched us drive along in "Gandalf," the white tour bus, as we left with the tour group on our way to the set. Once there, we got to see all of the Hobbit holes they constructed for filming, including Bag End. Each has a brilliantly colored door and well tended garden. They had all just been "freshened up," as filming for The Hobbit began less than a month ago.




After returning to "The Shire's Rest" (their base for the tours), we watched a sheep-shearing demo and I was thrilled to bottle-feed one of the lambs we had seen in the yard earlier!

The other important note from this afternoon was this is where we tried our first Ginger Beer. A cross between Ginger Ale and Root Beer, it has a strong ginger flavor and this particular brand (Bundaberg - supposedly the favorite of New Zealanders) came in a cute bottle that I'm sure made it taste even better.




After leaving Matamata, we wound our way down one-lane roads through farm after farm until we arrived in Rotorua, where we collapsed until the next morning!

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