The North Island

It’s been quite a few months since my July trip to New Zealand. However, with the new year, I wanted to make sure I didn’t forget the memories from the most magical trip I’ve ever been on. New Zealand was my pre-PhD trip, and now, starting my second semester of my PhD, it seems as good a time as any to relive those memories.

Honestly, this was the best solo trip I’ve ever taken, hands down. Like, I saw six separate rainbows in my first three days on the trip, and a total of at least eight during the ten days I was here. Two of them were full, “from point to point where they touch the ground you can see the entire rainbow” rainbows. It was been incredible. I kept having to pinch myself to make sure I was still alive and real and experiencing the things I was experiencing.

I am the type of person who obsessively plans trips. I’ve been working myself out of that habit in the last few years, but I still fall back on it time and time again. However, I’ve developed a healthier pattern of pinpointing main “to do” items and making those the things I plan around. The first and most obvious “to do” was Hobbiton. However, instead of massively researching New Zealand and lamenting all the things I would miss, I turned to a friend who had visited about six months earlier. Her inspiration led me to plan a 10-day vacation that I was very happy and excited about. New Zealand, as I’ve come to find, is the type of place where I could easily spend triple the amount of time and still not see everything I wanted to. So the fact that I had a solid 10-day plan that covered all of the “musts” that my friend had suggested sounded pretty dang great to me.

I arrived in Auckland on the first day at 6 AM. By the time I got my luggage, went through security, and got my rental car, it was nearing 9 AM. I’d been advised to get out of Auckland ASAP, and I had my reservation at Hobbiton on the first night anyway, so I only had until about noon to spend in the city. I decided to head to the Auckland Museum and surrounding park. I visited the greenhouses and did a small nature walk along a stream to ensure that the museum was open by the time I went to check it out. Then I spent the next hour and a half in the museum. The building itself is a war memorial, so the third floor had a lot of interesting war memorials. On the second floor was a natural history-type museum, and the first floor housed Māori cultural artefacts, including a spiritual house, a canoe, and artefacts from other pacific islands from which the Māori travelled and whose culture was originally closely connected. I am not well-informed on their history or personal opinions, but as an outsider, throughout my trip I have gotten the impression that there is a much deeper respect for and entrenchment of Māori culture in the overarching New Zealand culture than we in the U.S. have for our own native cultures. It was really nice to be in a national museum and get the sense that the culture was not only being studied and shared, but also deeply respected.

I left the museum and started on the first of my many drives, this time south toward Hobbiton. I had a bit of extra time, and I randomly stumbled onto the Hamilton Gardens, a botanic garden that displayed a lot of “around the world” themed gardens. Keep in mind that in New Zealand it is most definitely the middle of winter. Still, there were enough plants and the infrastructure itself was enough to keep me interested for the hour or so of extra time I had. I set my alarm and wandered the gardens until it went off. Then I got back in the car and drove to Hobbiton.

To say that I cried when I saw the Hobbiton sign was an understatement. Many of the nerd things that I am into, I am into because of my dad. But even Harry Potter and Star Wars kind of fall to the wayside in comparison to the Lord of the Rings in terms of significance in my dad’s and my relationship. The Lord of the Rings series were some of his favorite books from the time that he was in his late teens. When he was in his twenties and thirties, he would read the books yearly, sometimes reading each in just under a day as a sort of personal challenge. Then, after he’d read Little House on the Prairie and the early Harry Potter books, he’d started reading the Lord of the Rings to me at bedtime. My best childhood memories are of falling asleep to my dad’s soothing voice as he read another few pages of the story. He’d always have to backtrack, because Becca and I would always fall asleep before he stopped reading. Then we went and saw the movies together, and the movies became some of my favorites, a personal tradition that I would try to watch the series on or shortly after New Years each year. And then when my dad got sick, I decided that a special bonding activity that we could do, since I was out of the house most of the day and in the later months would only get back right around when he was going to bed, was to start reading The Fellowship of the Ring to him as he was falling asleep. Just like when I was little, he would fall asleep and we would have to backtrack. On the night he died, once everybody had left for the day and it was just my mom, my dad, my sister, and I in the room, I continued reading to him almost right up until the moment he passed. So, needless to say, I was very emotional as I was entering the vicinity. It was a place where I could strongly feel my dad’s presence, and it brought up a lot of positive emotions in relation to my relationship with him.

I’d paid the extra money for a dinner tour, so we began our tour around 3:40, leaving time to see the village during the day, eat at the Green Dragon Inn, and then walk through the village a bit at night. We were also able to see some stars! Needless to say, the entire night was magical and I was hardcore fangirling the entire time.

I stayed about an hour farther, close to my next morning’s activity, the Waitomo caves. The Waitomo caves are Māori-owned caves that house glow worms. These are worms whose tails literally glow in the dark so that it literally looks like stars in the sky. The tour had both a walking part and a boat ride. My tour was small, and so our tour guide allowed us to check out some parts of the tour that he couldn’t normally take people, and when we got to the boat we were able to fully lay down and experience the “sky” of glow worms just like you would experience stargazing. It was only the second day, and I had another one of the most magical experiences of my life. In addition to the Waitomo caves, I visited another local cave on a walking tour. This cave also housed glow worms. To end off the day, I had a a few hour drive east across the country. I stopped along the way at a Kiwi sanctuary, where I was able to see the national bird, before finally ending up in Rotorua, which is a city filled with hot springs and other geothermal activity.

It was still fairly early when I arrived, so I was able to do a few things that night before heading off to bed. I wandered along the beach and around some hot springs. Then I made my way to a nighttime treetop walk through the local Redwood trees. That experience again marked yet another incredibly magical experience (to the point that I wasn’t entirely sure I was allowed to have that many perfect moments in one trip, let alone in one day). The night was rounded out with a dinner at a local historical pub and a dip into the thermal baths at a local spa.

Day 3 consisted of me getting myself to the capitol, Wellington. I started the day off in Rotorua, visiting a local living Māori village. On this tour, a local Māori guide shared the history of the village as a tourist spot dating back to the late 1800s, as well as showing us how they used the hot springs for cooking and providing us with some fresh, hot-sprint-cooked corn. After hearing about local history and customs from the guide, we were left to watch the local geyser go off. After the geyser erupted, I departed Rotorua in the direction of Wellington. On the way, I stopped at another geothermal site called the “Craters of the Moon” which sat fairly near the town of Taupo and the local Lake Taupo. I also drove through Tongariro National Park and planned to stop for a hike, but it was the only time during the trip that the weather truly did not cooperate, and I decided not to stop because it was pouring. It turned out okay, though, as I continued on my trip and arrived in Wellington early enough to still grab dinner.