Fairy Tales in New Zealand
A new day down under, where we must sign contracts to take pictures, where we get in touch with the local law and where the day ends in a chateau in a national park far-far-away.
As one could have expected after reading our adventures of yesterday, we enjoyed a great breakfast at the Hamurana Estate. Both Alex and Fred came to greet us when we left. Oh, how much would we have loved to stay here a little longer!
Before we would hit the road to make our first Lord Of The Rings-stop, we needed to buy a couple of items in Rotorua. So we parked, payed the meter and went of shopping. Only to return just a few minutes after the meter expired and to find our first parking ticket for New Zealand. Vicky believes this to be our last as well…
We went of for Hobbitton, the village that was constructed to film the trilogy of the Lord of The Rings. Before they allowed us access here, we had to sign a document that would not allow us to release any of the pictures we have made. Not even to friends and family, not to facebook, not to whatever. So you will have to take a look at my new screensaver before you will now how Hobbitton will look for the new movie “The Hobbit”, being filmed in February here. If you are not a die hard fan of the movies, this might not be the right place to spend a little over 60 NZ$ per person. We had one person in the group who didn’t even see the movies. He had no idea what a hobbit actually was, but his tourbook said he should see Hobitton…
After the tour, we drove to Bayview Chateau in Tongariro. Tomorrow, we will conquer the Tongariro crossing. For you people that have seen lord of the rings, that’s Mordor!
Koen Blanquart is a strategy consultant, journalist, and author.
Wanderlust is one of his driving factors, and he shares his travels here on Boarding Today. Koen is also the skipper of SV Bagabonda, a sailing vessel making a slow circumvention of the globe..
Koen recently published a book on how to manage a remote team: The Suitcase Office.
