Day 14: Hobbiton & Waitomo caves

Today I have to leave my bed really early to get to the i-site Rotorua. There I get picked up and go on a day trip to the Waitomo glowworm caves and the Hobbiton on set. Keith, our bus driver, tells us interesting stories about Rotorua, New Zealand and other things while we are on our way to the caves. If u translate Rotorua it means lake two. Roto = lake rua = two 600 years ago when the Maoris arrived in New Zealand, 98% of the North Island was covered in forrest. But they changed that. Also before they arrived, there were no animals in New Zealand.

After approximately two hours we have reached our destination. The Waitomo caves. Our tour guides name is Aroha. Her name is in Maori and means love. Unfortunately we’re not allowed to take some pictures. That’s also for our own safety. It’s an unbelievable experience.

After that we are heading to the Ruakuri caves. They are even more beautiful and it’s even allowed to take photos. Pippen, our tour guide for the next like two hours explains us everything that we want to know about the glow worms. They catch their food by spreading strings, kind a like spiders do. The flies get caught in them. Then the glow worms get to their prey and drill a hole into their stomach. After that they vomit into that hole. Like that the fly slowly turns into a smoothie which the glow worms than drink. The cave is definitely worth a visit.

After a short stop for lunch we’re heading to the Hobbiton movie set. Dart is our tour guide and explains all that we need to know. On set there is one single which isn’t real. That’s because the Hobbit movies play 60 years before the Lord of the Rings ones. That’s why this particular tree had to look smaller and younger. So the tree was built out of metal and plastic. 120’000 fake leaves in total had to be glued on the tree. But there was one problem. Peter Jackson (the director) didn’t like the color of the leaves so they had to redo the whole thing. In the Hobbit movies, Bilbo celebrates his 111. birthday. In the scene you can see a big tree and 100 people that celebrate with him. These people are actually citizens of the town of Matamata which is located right next to the film set. There’s a scene in which there is a beautiful sunset. Because it’s not possible that the sun sets in the East they just filmed a sunrise and put it in reverse. The problem with that was, that there were some birds in the scene which eventually flew backwards. That only was noticed at the premiere of the movie.