"YOU STEP ON TO THE ROAD AND IF YOU DON'T KEEP YOUR FEET, THERE'S NO KNOWING WHERE YOU MIGHT BE SWEPT OFF TO"

March 18th - Bilbo Baggins takes the credit for the title of today's blog, and it is very fitting given what we have been up to today.  We left Auckland this morning and made our way south to a very important pilgrimage site - Hobbiton!  Yes, the movie set for both Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit is open for tours, and I have to say, it was fantastic.  We were really impressed by the scale and detail of this set. It really confirmed what I suspected all along - that Peter Jackson is an unbelievable control freak! Small example - the tree that you see above Bag End in The Hobbit movie (it is the smaller tree on the hill in the middle picture below) is made of foam modelled on a real oak tree, and there are approximately 200,000 individual Thai silk leaves on it - all wired on by hand.  When Peter Jackson saw the tree for the first time, he didn't like the colour of the leaves, so he had all of the leaves spray painted a different colour - again, by hand.  Yikes!

The set was much bigger than we thought it would be and the countryside around it is absolutely spectacular.  It is generally very difficult to impress teenagers but I think that everyone got a bit of a thrill at seeing the actual movie sets and getting the inside scoop on the movie magic that made it all happen.  Liam was chosen as the group's honourary Hobbit to help explain how different building scales were used to make people look bigger or smaller, as required.  (Unfortunately, this triggered some unfortunate flashbacks for Siobhan relating to Liam's being chosen to select the wand at Harry Potter World, but that is a whole other blog post.)

After we left Hobbiton, we drove on to our next port of call, Rotorua, with its amazing mineral hot springs and geysers.  The downside to all this natural activity is the overwhelming smell of sulphur in this place.  I won't tell you what the 13 year old boy says it smells like but you can use your imagination.  We are staying in a motel that has to be one of the most cursed on the planet, because so far, we have not found a single thing that has worked or is not broken.  I figure it's good for the kids though - helps keep them humble.  Rotorua also has a Maori cultural village and we plan to attend some of the activities there tomorrow.  And it looks like Zorbing may also be happening tomorrow, and that will make for an interesting blog post, I'm sure.