HOBBITON! White-water Rafting and ZORBING!!!!!!!

New Year's Day, we drove out of Auckland (again) south to Matamata where they filmed the parts of The Lord of the Rings based in the Shire.  We went on a tour of the set... and it was amazing!  Fortunately, since they're filming The Hobbit, they're updating all the hobbit holes so it looks just like it did from the movies (except teeny tiny).  Here's all the pictures I can show you of Hobbiton - otherwise Peter Jackson will have to kill me.

After our tour of hobbiton, there was a sheep shearing demonstration and then we got to feed the lambs!  The guy who sheared the sheep did the whole thing in about a minute.  It was rather impressive and the sheep didn't really seem to mind.  Apparently the trick is keeping the sheep comfortable and off their tailbone.  The man who owns the farm where they filmed LOTR can shear 600 sheep in a day.  There's a guy in NZ who can sheer over 800 in a day!!

After we fed the lambs we climbed back into the cars, stopped for some quick lunch and headed on to Rotorua and the mud pools and hot springs.  Laura and Todd and the rest of the Americans went to the mud pool wonderland but Vanessa, Graham, Lorena and I went to a free place on the side of the road that only the locals know about (and were surprised the Vanessa and Graham knew about it!) where a hot spring mixes with a cold spring.  
Soooo coool!!!  The closer you got to the left (of the picture) the hotter it got...and it got seriously hot!  All the way on the right it was rather cold.  You could sit in the middle and have your left side be nice and toasty hot and your right side be cold.  Trippy but cool.  However, we were all hours from death.  There's a type of amoebic meningitis in some geothermal pools and if it gets into your nasal passages you have a day to live while the amoeba travels to your brain causing it to swell until you die.  None of us got it :)  We all kept our heads above water and life has since continued unabated.

The next morning, everyone except Lorena and I left early to continue their trip down to Wellington and then further down the west coast of the south island.  Lorena and I had other plans - mainly white water rafting and zorbing.  We booked our trip and wandered around downtown Rotorua playing the tourists until our 12:30 rafting trip.  While waiting for the rafting company to come pick us up, we met Nina, another girl going rafting who was staying at our backpackers.  Nina's from England and is thoroughly awesome.  I've already made plans to stay with her for the 2012 Olympics in London.  Hopefully she'll remember she said ok when I knock on her door next year.

We picked up several people and when we got to the rafting place, we all got life jackets, helmets, and wetsuit booties.  OH - so attractive those booties were.  Anyways, we took a bus to the river and were briefed on how to raft en route.  At the river, we broke out into groups and Lorena and I added Nina into ours since she was on her own traveling through NZ.  We practiced a bit in the calm waters at the start of the trip and then we were on our way!

We went through several rapids and down a couple 3 meter drops (so fun!) and had chances to rest between the rapids.  One of our guides was Maori and told us about the history of the Kaituna river.  Maori warriors had been buried along the river and he and the other guides called out to the river a prayer of safe passage and respect before we went down the biggest drop.  The biggest drop, apparently the biggest in the world that you can commercially raft, is on this river - 7 meters!  Here's a series of pictures of our raft heading down the fall...
 
After the big drop there was a place where we could hop out and float by the boat.  Obvs I did that :)  We caught up with the sledgers and tried not to run them over, and then sadly, it was all over.  For my first rafting trip it was so much fun!  AND I didn't have to get up super early to do it.  So, now, my mind may or may not be wandering to the possibility of becoming a rafting guide when I get back to the states...
After rafting, Lorena and I planned to go zorbing and based on what our backpacker lady told us, we'd have plenty of time to do both in the same day.  What she didn't tell us was that we would need a car because the buses weren't running and the Zorb company doesn't pick you up from the backpackers like the rafting company does.  Fat lotta good she is at her job.  So, upon learning from the rafting company, that Zorb does not pick you up, we asked the guy dropping us off at the backpackers if he could drop us off at the bus stop.  Once we got to the bus stop, Lorena ran into the nearby store to double check if buses were running (good thing she did since they weren't).  

art on the wall next to the bus stop

When she came out, she informed me that we needed to hoof it and hope that we could make it in under an hour and a half (before it closed).  Fortunately for us, one of the guys who worked in the video store Lorena ran into was about to leave and offered to give us a ride up there.  So nice!  He drove us to the first imitation zorbing place, Lorena checked if it was the right place, and when it wasn't he drove us to the right one.  We thanked him profusely and ran up to the Zorbing place!

After a quick chat with the receptionist lady we decded to do the zig zag track, separately, and with water in the zorb.  It was ridiculous and so much fun!  The zorb is HUGE and the sphere that they stick you in, in the middle of the zorb is surprisingly small but can fit up to 3 big guys!  They throw maybe 1/2 a gallon of water in the small sphere, you dive in after it and then they zip the little opening closed.  I'm not claustrophobic, but it was a slightly bizarre sensation to be zipped into a plastic spherical cage where you know there's a limited amount of air.  I got over it pretty quickly because they opened the gate and then I had to play "hamster" and get the ball rolling down the hill.  I started out standing but as soon as I hit the first grass berm on the course, I got knocked on my bum and spent the rest of the ride swishing around in the water with no idea what was up or down and I laughed myself silly.  It was amazing.

that's me playing hamster, and lorena and I at the bottom of the hill

Once we were changed again, we started to walk slowly out of the car park looking for people headed back to downtown Rotorua.  Fortunately, we asked this guy and girl if they were headed back and they were and gave us a ride.  Everyone here is soooo nice (and not mass murderers thank goodness - although Lorena and I totally could have taken them) and they dropped us off at our backpackers.  We showered and head across the driveway to the bar next door.  We met up with Nina and some of the people she'd met on the "hop on - hop off" bus tour she was on and by the time darkness fell we had gathered a huge group of backpackers at our picnic table out on the patio drinking beers, sharing stories and learning how to roll our clothes up in burritos to help with packing.  It was an awesome day and I met some super cool people.  Backpacking is totally the way to travel!