Back to Auckland
March 13th – I didn’t sleep. Not a wink. Still riding the high from the day before. Tried on my new dress during the night. Looked at the bottles of wine. Read all the labels a hundred times. Tried to write in my journal but was vibrating so much just couldn’t write. Sleep is for suckers! It is going to be a long day.
After a cooked breakfast, we got on the road for the 6hr drive to Auckland. Once again, I am behind the wheel. Not sure I should be with the lack of sleep but we have some twisty roads ahead of us and I would like to avoid puking today if possible.
The plan is to make a quick stop at the Crab Farm Winery, have lunch in Tirau and then stop at Hobbiton. I love that I get one more winery. I’m like a junkie at this point.
Crab Farm Winery is a really cool, funky little place. It was underwater before the big earthquake. Used to have hundreds of crabs living in the area, hence the name. We stopped there because the Kiwi had been to this place before and wanted to pick up some wine as it is not easily available in Auckland liquor stores. It’s a small local place but ultra cool vibe. We sampled a few different wines they had open. And I may or may not have managed to snag a bottle of their newly created bubbly chardonnay and a tasting glass. Maybe.
Ok, back in the car to Hobbiton. They rebuilt the set in the original location with more permanent materials for people to come tour after the movies were made. This was the little Monkey’s request. He wanted to go to Hobbiton after hearing about it from a classmate. Needless to say he was pretty excited.
We all hopped on the tour bus that would take us onto the farmer’s property where the set was located. Obviously Mr Alexander, the farmer who owns the land, has done very well. Kind of crazy to think that Sir Peter Jackson flew over this place one day and said – I will build Hobbiton here. And because of that little valley – Mr Alexander is now very famous.
It was a couple of hours and almost 4kms of walking. So many little details. Clothes hanging from a clothes line, little fishing baskets, and bread and cheese at little market stalls. No detail too small.
The most famous of the sets in Hobbiton, is the big oak tree. Over 200 000 hand painted leaves, manually added to a plaster tree. Done twice because Sir Peter Jackson wasn’t satisfied the first time. Didn’t know it wasn’t real even getting up close to it and knowing it wasn’t real. Very impressive.
He also burnt down the Green Dragon Tavern. For real. He decided that it would look more real if he actually just burnt it down instead of using CGI. As you can imagine, the local fire department had some concerns with this. They insisted on being on site in the event this got out of hand. But they kept showing up in the shots. So Sir Peter Jackson had them all dress up as hobbits to play extras in the scene. I can imagine working for this guy must have been an interesting experience to say the least.
At the end of the tour, they offer you a beer or ginger beer in the Green Dragon Tavern. Nice way to end the tour.
By the tavern, they planted a bunch of wildflowers. There are not many flowering plants in NZ or at least not in the colours that Sir Peter Jackson wanted. So he had a bunch planted. Who loves flowers? Bees do. Loads and loads of bees. So while trying to enjoy that pint of ginger beer, I did what is the now famous bee run. Basically, you just run while screaming. The Monkey shares this same fear of the little yellow and black buzzers, lucky kid. We looked like we were doing a relay race passing the ginger beers back and forth while running and screaming. A little something extra for the tourists that day. You’re welcome.
We had a great day out in Hobbiton. Nice way to break up the drive. We stopped and picked up some Indian food for dinner along with a couple bottles of wine. Super fun to be standing in front of the wine rack looking at all the different places I have now been to. Cool feeling.
The food was amazing. Polished off a couple bottles of vino and listened to some cool NZ tunes from a band called Fat Freddy’s Drop. You need to check them out.