The Satcher's New Zealand Adventure: Hobbiton

2015-01-10

When we planned our trip, I was skeptical that we could work everything in that we wanted to do. Visiting the Hobbiton movie set has always been really high on our list and we were able to pull it
off on the way home from Whitianga. We stopped for a quick breakfast at a country cafe Laura had read about. The owners have some donkeys in a paddock to entertain guests and the kids got the chance to feed yesterday's scraps to the donkeys. I heard an airplane fly over while the kids were petting the donkeys and I looked up in time to see some joker in a Van's RV do an aileron roll over the cafe. Crazy Kiwis.

An aileron roll?

Feeding the donkeys

Matamata was about two hours from the cafe in the middle of New Zealand race horse country. The little town of Matamata looked like it could be anywhere in middle Tennessee. We were excited about the Hobbiton tour and it turned out to be really nice. James, a pleasant Matamata native, was our tour guide. Laura and I swallowed hard when told us he was four (4) years old when Lord of the Rings was filmed in Matamata.

The facilities were great and there was plenty of time to walk around and snap photos. The only drawback was the boys were tired of posing by the end. We had a great time on our Northland trip and we were able to see a good chunk of the North Island. I'll end this series of posts with shots of Hobbiton.