Last tour in New Zealand

It's funny that after nearly 3 months of traveling around in our beloved campervan, we already have the last "big tour" behind us. In this tour, we wanted to make up for the activities we missed due to the bad weather.

So, we set off from Pukekohe, a small town below Auckland, and went to Hamilton and Matamata. Our first stop was at the Blue Springs, where 70% of New Zealand's bottled water comes from. The water has been filtered for over 100 years, making it so clear that it shimmers blue.

For the next day, we had booked another highlight of New Zealand, the Hobbiton Film Set. To avoid the crowdedness (with 3,000 visitors daily), we booked the first tour of the day at 8:30.

We had very good weather in the morning and were excited as the bus took us to the film set with our guide Kane. On the way, the bus driver familiarized us with the atmosphere of Middle-earth and explained some things about the creation and layout of the set.

Once we arrived in the Shire, Kane first asked the group who knows the movies and books because, as it turned out during the tour, she repeatedly referred to scenes that took place at the respective locations. She also provided insider information. One of them was, for example, that the tree above Bilbo Baggins' hole is an exact silicone replica of the tree from The Lord of the Rings trilogy, only 60 years younger. As Kane frequently emphasized, the director Peter Jackson is an extreme perfectionist.
As we noticed at the Hobbit holes, all the "houses" were prepared with great attention to detail and at the same time were given their different "tasks". For example, one was selling cheese and another was selling bread, just like in a small village.
At the end of the tour, we were treated to a free beer at the Green Dragon, a pub in Hobbiton. Before that, Kane told us that one of the buildings is an exact replica because Peter Jackson wanted to have a fire from The Lord of the Rings film that looks so realistic that he had the cottage completely burned down.

On the way back, we walked through the 100% real vegetable garden to the bus, which took us back to the starting point with a few film clips.

On the same day, we continued to the Bridal Veil Falls, a 55-meter-high waterfall. This was the most beautiful waterfall we saw in New Zealand, along with the McLean Falls. Despite the short walk, it was more or less in the middle of the forest/jungle and its basin was surrounded by bright green moss. In addition, thanks to the sun, you could even see a rainbow at the base of the waterfall.

Actually, we had booked a rafting tour for the following day, where you could do the highest rafting jump in the world, but it was canceled beforehand. The reason for this was the flooding of the river caused by the cyclone, which raged particularly in this area.