Friday, 20 November 2015

New Zealand – Stop 3 – Rotorua

On our way to our next stop we were going to Hobbiton!! Now this is quite a shock but I haven't properly seen the Lord of the Rings movies or the Hobbit ones, but despite this I was really excited about going to where they filmed them. I'm a huge Harry Potter fan and going to the Harry Potter movie set was really good, so I knew this would be amazing. It did not disappoint. The whole tour takes around 2 hours, and then it has a giftshop and cafe.

From where you can park you get a coach to the start of the tour, and you begin where all the hobbit holes are. They are so cute. They were all different sizes. Some even had mini veg patches, washing lines and postboxes. The whole thing was super cute. We then went down to see where they filmed the party scene in the Hobbit. Next we were taken to the Green Dragon Inn where we got a complimentary cider and got to sit in there for a bit. We then went round the lake and a little more scenery. The whole thing was really good and cost around 90 dollars, which is about £45. The only thing is we were quite a large group so I felt like if we were at the back we were rushed a little bit even though people ahead had the photos.






In the evening we had the choice of a Maori cultural experience evening, and we could stay if we wanted to. We decided just to do the evening as staying over was a little pricey. We were picked up from our hostel and driven back by the most hilarious driver. When we got there we were welcomed with their dance thing which was really good. From there we went around their 'village' and they spoke to each group about certain aspects of their culture, for example the haka, weaving, how the boys train and some games. We then saw our dinner being pulled from the ground where they cooked it, and boy were we excited, roast lamb!! We then went into a, sort of, mini theatre where they did a couple of performances for us. Then is was DINNER TIME, eat as much as you like and there was even pudding too. The food was nice, very smokey in flavour, but was nice. Some of the people on the bus bought tupperware to fill up which was hilarious, and we should of definitely thought about that beforehand. The whole experience was really good and it seemed nice to learn a bit more about the Maori culture.


ACCOMMODATION – Base Hot Rocks - $30
We had a mixed shared 8 bed dorm here. We had an en suite shower and toilet which was good, although a couple of the lights didn't work which was annoying, and there wasn't really enough plugs for 8 people. The space was pretty small for a room of 8. The hostel did have it's own pool which sounded nice, although we didn't have time to go in it.

Rating – 3/5

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