You have to, don't you?

This morning we hit the road. The tin can has thus far held up
surprisingly well, despite worrying sounds and a mysterious fluid
leak.

Our car. Bleh.

The plan was to head straight for Rotarua, which is a town that smells
perpetually of fart. There's luging down mountains, half buried
villages in lava and geyzers (hence the smell of sulphur all over the
place). As we discussed our route last night however, someone
mentioned that if we take the slightly more complicated but actually
faster route we would be passing within a few miles of the set of
Hobbiton. Now how can you say no to visiting the Shire?

Of course you can't.

This actually turned out to be a very enjoyable hour and a half
wondering around hills on a sheep farm out in the middle of nowhere.
The location was ultimately chosen by Peter Jackson because it had a
beatiful tree sitting beside a pool, as described in the Hobbit and
LotRs.

When the original trilogy finished shooting, they pulled half the 30
odd facades they had built down. Nobody thought there'd be more than
six months worth of visitors to a half broken set. Needless to say,
they've been increasing numbers of tours every year for nine years
now, and Mr. Jackson and co. recently returned to same location to
shoot the Hobbits scenes of the Shire. They rebuilt the original set
and added 7 or 8 more bringing the total of fake houses up to 42. The
detail in the facades and the wee stools and cups and jugs is
marvellous and we were able to ramble right up to the doors.

German chap for scale

The guide regalled us with stories of the errr, passionate fans who
have visited over the years, including the seven foot german dressed
as a hobbit who refused to leave the set when the visit was finished
and the countless pedants who quoted back verbatim verse from the
books, the kind of thing that had Jackson and co. spending hundreds of
thousands of dollars on never seen details in the set in the interest
of veracity, like extra doorways down on the pond which are mentioned
in the book but never appear onscreen.

So that was good fun. Unfortuanately, as you can probably tell from
the pics, it's also started pissing down rain over here, and driving
down from Auckland today, I have to say, the place eerily feels more
like home every day. I'll address this matter more in a later entry.
For now though, sleep. Luging and smelly geysers in the morning.