Written by Wesley Klehm
When we arrived in Auckland, it was storming rather fiercely. We were a bit worried that this would affect our trips and tours, but thankfully the next morning it was all clear. We found our car rental and headed south. We stopped at a McDonald’s and had some breakfast items and then went off the beaten path to head towards Matamata. The northern island is beautiful. It’s just rolling hills and plains with tons of trees. It helped that it was in the middle of fall and that’s the best time of year. Along the way we came across a little town named Cambridge and it was just adorable. If I were to move to NZ I would definitely think about living here.
After some more driving through gorgeous scenery we arrived at the Shire! Sterl took lots of pictures of the signs and then we hopped on the tour bus to head down to Hobbiton. It was incredible! We stopped to pose for a picture by every other hobbit hole, every sign, and just everything! We were in Hobbiton! How awesome is that? When we got up to Baggend, our guide told us about some the crazy things Peter Jackson had them do, like the lady who had to walk every day to make a realistic path to the clothes line, and the tree above Baggend was fake and had fake leaves that were repainted a couple times. The guide also passed out leaves from the tree. We grabbed two, one for us and one for a friend who was jealous we were able to go here.
We continued on through the village and went to the Green Dragon! We enjoyed a lovely mug of ginger beer and shared a meat pie. We took another bazillion pictures of the inside and outside and were tremendously bummed when the guide told us we had to get moving. We headed back to the bus and continued on our journey while saying goodbye to the Shire. 😦
There and back again 