Not many photos here. I took these as we were leaving and the pools were beginning to fill up. And I’m totally copy/pasting from their website:

Three cascading, marble-lined pools (38˚C to 39˚C), feature alkaline water. The smooth terraced walls provide a popular resting spot for bathers!
The large deeper alkaline pool (38˚C) is an excellent place to stretch out for some light activity.
The three Priest Spa pools (39˚C to 42˚C), offer special thermal bathing in acidic water from the Radium hot spring, long renowned for its therapeutic properties.

Just a disclaimer. We were going to pass this place by if it weren’t for the request of my friend, coworker, and fellow blogger  (theblogandthebeautiful.com if you haven’t already check it out) Nichole LuMaye. We were wet from the NZ Riverjet, cold, and it was raining.

I’m so glad she suggested it because it was amazing. Truly the “thermal wonderland” we were not expecting.

This place is huge. It covers 18 sq. Km and has the largest area of surface thermal activity of any hydrothermal system in the Taupo Volcanic Zone.

The colors of the vents, pools, and craters were incredible. And stinky. That steam is a whole lotta hydrogen sulfide. And it totally wraps completely around you and you kinda smell like sulfur too by the end of it.

While we were making our way back, the was a bride and groom taking photos sitting on the edge of the Champagne pool. My phone had died or else I’d snapped a pic. But all I could think was wow, I hope the smell gets out of all that tulle.

Crater starlings, swallows, and mynahs nest in holes on the walls of this collapsed crater. The heat from below incubates the eggs.

The acid green you are seeing is for real. This was a pretty large pool formed by the excess water from the Champagne Pools mixing with Sulphur and ferrous salts.

This is an algae that’s all through the park.

This place was way cool. As usual there are tons more pics that if you want to see, let me know!

This morning we decided to make the best of it and see what the Skyline Gondola and Luge had to offer.

Being the early birds worked in our favor, as most of the park was empty yet and we got a gondola completely to ourselves.

They offered a pretty cool Nature Walk complete with some wildlife.

The birds were incredibly loud and diverse. There is a pretty big conservation program here to take out introduced predators. One such program has removed nearly 3 tons of rats, mice, possums, stoats, and ferrets!

Then it was time do some luging! I haven’t been since I was a kid at Raccoon Mountain in Tennessee and this was Kevin’s first.

They had a nice little chairlift to take you back up to the top.

Of course, it wouldn’t be one of our trips without rain…while we were trapped…on the chair lift.

We finished the morning in the Jelly Belly store, where they had a larger than life game of Beanboozled you could pay to play. I was fine taking in the jelly bean art, myself. 

“I’m going on an adventure!” – Bilbo, in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

One of the nice things about the tour was how much that was used in filming remained. Including this lovely fence that Bilbo leaed over, waiving his signed contract, to join the Dwarves. One thing we immediately noticed was how high the fence was, and how in the heck did Martin Freeman, a man of hobbit size, spring so easily across? (We suspect springboards).

Here is the scene from the movie:

Our attempts:

 

We entered through the same path that Gandalf ‘ s cart does in Fellowship of the Ring. It was pretty crowded but you can kinda tell in this pic of Kevin.

But as you can well imagine, the best part of the tour was Bag End.

And how could we possibly forget faithful Samwise’s hole?

And we made sure to help out where we could. ..

Then it was off down into the village for a pint at The Green Dragon. The beer is specially brewed for Hobbiton and cannot be purchased anywhere else.

There’s a pic of me in front of the actual Green Dragon, but it looks like I forgot to upload it. You can kind of see it behind me in the next picture at the top of the bar.

A whirlwind tour filled with much hobbitness. There are of course, tons of pictures of the site, including more hobbit holes, The Party Tree, etc. If you’re keen to see more, let me know!

We joined up with our guides Paul and George from Blackwater Rafting company to do the Black Abyss Tour. As before, want the blow by blow? Head to the archives for the more descriptive version.

 

In order to make things a little neater, I’m going to split this guy up into two posts. If you want the wordier versions, please look back into the archives of the same name.

After doing our Black Abyss tour in the Glow Worm Caves, we stayed at Te Tiro B&B and absolutely fell in love.

This farm has been family owned for over 5 generations and covers more than 1600 acres. They have their own ponds and glow worm “grotto.”

We didn’t want to leave this sweet place and hope to come back some day to spend more than just one measley night.

Laptop is out and about, camera photos are uploaded! Here is a few choice pics from earlier in the week…

Hot springs. Thermal vents and geysers. Bubbling mud pits. Steaming lakes with interesting colors and formations. What do these all have in common?

Sulphur.

The geothermal vents are everywhere here, puffing up like an underground paper mill. Visually very interesting. But the smell…

The waters are purported to be healing- the acidic springs soothing aches and pains, while the alkaline ones are natural antiseptic. At any rate, we are staying near Kuirau park that had several foot bathing areas.

Kevin gave it a go, but I was too weirded out by people soup.

I took videos of the boiling mud, but I haven’t figured out how to add those yet, so once again…until the big update. Here’s some stills of a few.

Sunny blue skies and warm weather set the stage for our visit to the Hobbiton Movie Set. We were amazed at how many people were on the grounds at the same time. It looked like they ran a new bus load of people every 15 or 30 minutes. I think there were easy close to 200 people on the grounds at any one time.

While it was amazing to see all the scale replicas of the hobbit holes, I think the main star was the beautiful plantings and gardens. They really set the stage to allow you to feel like you were among Hobbits who happened to step out.

The best part was of course getting to see Bilbo’s house. Photos are, you guessed it, on the other camera. But we did take a few with my phone.

Now we’re off to Rotorua to see what we can get in to!

This is Ratbag. He is resident kitty at Te Tiro. Getting up for your morning pee? You gotta pay the toll.

Finished with your pee? It’s Ratbag time.

Which just goes to show…that no matter where you are, cats kinda rule the world.

It’s 630 am here and I’ve still not seen a hair dryer, so forgive the luscious locks.