Finally, the reason we’d come to New Zealand in the first place: Hobbiton! Just kidding, but we are ginormous dorks so we were pretty excited to see the film set. We showed up in the afternoon and had a few hours to wait before our tour started, so we killed time scarfing down ice cream and perusing the gift shop. Because of course there’s a gift shop. You can buy Gandalf’s magic scarf (pretty sure Tolkien never mentioned a magic scarf, but hooray merchandising).
At our allotted hour we got on a bus with about 30 other people, and started the drive through the surrounding hills to the movie set. A video of Peter Jackson told us about the set, which sits on working farmland. The first time it was built for the LOTR trilogy, it was only meant to be temporary so was built of foam and other flimsy materials. But when Jackson wanted to rebuild the set for the Hobbit movies, the landowner, no doubt with giant dollar signs in his eyes like in the cartoons, asked if they could build it permanently this time so they could turn it into an attraction.
We topped a few sheep-covered hills, and there was the party tree! And the Green Dragon!
Our tour guide was an energetic Texan girl, who was really playing up the Texas accent. Lots of y’alls and howdys thrown in. We thought it was a little odd, especially when she started speaking in…colorful… idioms. Our favorite was “if that’s not true, then I’m a possum!”. She later let on to Justin that it was her last day on the job, and she was trying to see how far she could play up the Texas thing for the foreigners. She was a lot of fun, and definitely made the tour.
Hobbiton was so much fun, and definitely worth the trip out if you’re ever in NZ!
This was our last night with the camper, so we found a nice free campsite by a nearby river, and enjoyed one last beautiful sunset with the monster van.
