New Zealand

One Down, One To Go

After two nights in Aongatete and a wonderful evening at Hobbiton we made the five hour drive back to Whangarei where we hopped aboard Dazzler to drop of some items and pick up others. We all spent one night in Whangarei at the Discovery Hotel before making the two hour drive back south to Auckland. We stayed in a wonderful downstairs apartment that is part of a larger home. It is just fifteen minutes from the airport and it was perfect.
That night were all completely exhausted from our 19 days of traveling New Zealand. All in all we traveled over 2000 miles, visited 9 cities and saw some of the most amazing parts of New Zealand from pastures and beaches to mountains and glaciers. Yes, we certainly had an amazing time and we couldn’t have had better company.
Dan and I had an early morning flight out of Auckland the following day. You see, while our New Zealand adventure had come to a close, our United States adventure was just beginning. Next stop….Brisbane, Australia for a four hour layover and then on to Los Angeles.
It’s been over a year since either of us have see our family and friends so for the next month we planned to do just that. We arrived in Los Angeles, spent one night with Jack & Mary and then started making our way north toward the Bay Area to see Dan’s oldest daughter and her family.
Since I’d never been in this part of the world before Dan decided to take the scenic route north. We traveled on Highway 1 all the way up the coast of California. Oh my! This is one beautiful route! We stopped in Pismo Beach for lunch one day at the Ventana Grill. OH MY GOD! They have New England Clam Chowder that is better than any I’ve ever eaten in my entire life. It is so creamy and full of huge clams. Seriously, if you are ever in the neighborhood you have to stop there. They win awards every year for their chowder. Oh yes, the view is amazing too!
Dan took me to Morro Bay one night. This quaint little seaside town is absolutely adorable. There’s seals swimming all in the bay and along the main road there’s lots of restaurants and shops. He even took me to this beautiful hotel where we had a fireplace in our room that had a balcony overlooking the bay and the seals. Yes, it was pretty sweet.
On our way up Highway 1 we even stopped at a beach that was literally covered with hundreds of Elephant Seals. They are truly awesome creatures and I got a video of two males fighting on the beach. Stay tuned for that one. It’s short but pretty cool.
We spent one evening with Dan’s daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter before driving back to Los Angeles and hopping a plane to Florida. Our very dear friends, Jay and Connie, picked us up at Tampa airport and took us to surprise my mother. You see she thought we were coming in March so we were just a tab bit early. I just love to surprise her and needless to say she was shocked but also thrilled.
For sixteen days we enjoyed spending time with some of our favorite people in the world. My mom fell in love with Dan. It was the most time they’d spent together since we’ve been together and of course he was his typical Captain Save-A-Hoe self. He fixed things around her house that needed to be tended to and even took her car to get several things dealt with that were going bad. He cooked for her and drove her wherever she needed to go and he blew the leaves off her driveway everyday. Yes, he did all the right things. Mom even said she’d send me back to New Zealand and keep Dan. Hmmmm!
Our time in Florida flew by and before we knew it, it was time to say our goodbyes and get back on a plane for California. We spent another week there staying with Dan’s sister, Tina and seeing his middle daughter and her hubby. Unfortunately his youngest had moved to another state so we didn’t get to see her on this trip. There’s only so much time and money to go around.
Before we knew it a month had gone by and we were on a plane headed back to New Zealand. We were both glad to be back on Dazzler but she’s on the hard so it wasn’t the super wonderful feeling of coming home.
It’s my first time living on a boat while it’s on the hard and now I know why they call it being on the hard. No, it’s not because you’re on land. It’s because living on a boat that doesn’t move and is sixteen feet above ground where you can’t use the head or the sink and must trek up and down a flight of stairs and walk across the yard to use the facilities IS HARD! But there is work that must be done so we have no other choice. For you landlubbers, living on the hard is sort of like living in your house when it’s being completely remodeled. Nothing is where it’s supposed to be, everything is a mess and nothing is easy.
Oh well, it’s just three weeks right? And once it’s done we will be back in the water and headed for warmer weather. OK! I can handle it.
Cheers,
Jilly

Aongatete, January 2017

Kiwi Farms And Hobbits!

Christchurch is far behind us now as we have driven another 972 kilometers (604 miles) in the past two days. We drove from Christchurch to Picton to pick up the Bluebridge Ferry and then spent a night in Wellington. The following morning we drove to Aongatete where we arrived at the Aongatete Air B&B. This beautiful apartment is located on the bottom floor of a much larger house and is surrounded by a Kiwi farm and an avocado plantation. We were greeted as we arrived by our host, Amber, as well as her adorable puppy, Oscar. Amber was very sweet. She led us to the apartment and showed us around. The apartment is wonderful and has a fantastic view of the backyard. We love this place.

We woke up the following morning and decided we would just hang out around the apartment for the day. After all, there are beautiful gardens and wonderful places to walk and enjoy the scenery. Dan and I took a walk after breakfast to check out how Kiwis are grown and view the beautiful grounds. We’d never seen kiwi plants before so this was a new one for us. Heck, it wasn’t until we arrived in New Zealand that we understood exactly how you are supposed to eat a kiwi. If you don’t know, let me share as it was a revelation for us. Apparently, the kiwi people just cut them in half and then use a spoon to scrape the skin off of them as they pull out a “ball” of fruit. Yep…one kiwi is basically two bites. Who knew?

For dinner this evening we took the one hour drive to Matamata for our last big adventure for this trip. What’s in Matamata? Hobbiton. What’s that? Well, if you are like me you probably don’t know much about Hobbiton. At least I didn’t until I started researching things to do in New Zealand. Hobbiton is where they filmed the Lord of the Rings movies. Not being one for far out movies like these I had no idea but when I saw their website and how cool it looked I knew we had to see this place.

When you arrive at the designated area you are then transferred to a bus that takes you to the actual movie set. It’s out on this beautiful plot of land and since it was later in the day the light was just fabulous as the sun’s golden rays bounced off the ponds and tall grasses. Once we arrived at the set we were escorted through to the actual shire. Here we were divided into a couple of groups and from there we were escorted around the shire where they told us interesting facts about the movies and how the set was created and used.

One kind of funny fact is that there is a large pond in the middle of the shire. When they started filming they found there were so many frogs in the pond that they actually overpowered their audio equipment. What did they do? They hired someone to come and sweep the pond of all the frogs. This person relocated the frogs to a pond several miles away. It worked for a few days but all of the the frogs returned. They repeated this process over and over until they eventually had to relocate the frogs more than 12 kilometers (7 miles) away. Even then they came back. It just took longer so it gave them more time to film in between the frog sweeps.

Another cool fact is that the tree that is shown on top of Bilbo Baggins’ home is actually fake. The producers had this tree made for the set. The reason? Well, they wanted to be sure the tree looked exactly the same in each of the movies. Each leaf was painstakingly glued to the tree and as leaves fell off between filming they were replaced. They even have a smaller version of the tree for one of the movies where they go back in time. The interesting part of this is that they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to create this tree and it appeared for just a few seconds in all of the movies combined.

After our tour of the movie set we were led to the Green Dragon Inn where we were treated to some tasty beer and a wonderful hobbit style meal. It was served family style on these long tables. There was so much food. It was truly a feast! And, it was really tasty. We ate and ate until we were stuffed and then they brought out these boards filled with desserts so we ate some more.

Once dinner was done we were led back into the bar at the Green Dragon where we were handed lanterns. The time had come for our tour of the shire at night. Well, it certainly was very beautiful at night as well with all of the lights on the little hobbit holes. The nighttime part of the tour took about a half an hour and then we were led back to our busses.

Like I said, I’m not much of a Lord of the Rings movie watcher. In fact I never even watched one until we came home. I did find it interesting to watch one having been to the set but I’m still not a fan. They are too dark and strange for my taste. As for the movie set…I loved it! The only thing I wish they had done differently would be to have had people dressed as hobbits walking around. You know…make it a little more Disney like. Now that would have been super cool. But, as it was, it was a fun evening and one more thing we can check off our bucket list.

Cheers,

Jilly & Captain Dan