Hobbiton – near Matamata, North Island, NZ

We continued the drive north to Matamata, a small village made famous by the filming of the Lord of the Rings, and recently the Hobbit, nearby. At the i-Site we paid for the next day’s earliest tour of Hobbiton, about 20 km southwest on a side road. We stayed at the Maple Lodge in town and had dinner at one of the few restaurants that was open - the Workmen’s Pub. Supposedly where many film crews (not for the Hobbits movie at that time since they finished their filming around December last year) stopped for food, but all the wait staff was sworn to secrecy.

Next morning we were on the 9:50 am tour. At the gift shop, we checked around for a nice coffee mug with a hobbit on it, or at least Mt Doom – nada. This place is under-supplied for film buffs looking for souvenirs. There are very tasteful and high quality wool shawls, scarves, blankets, hats, socks and mittens and caps, but only the black beanies say “Hobbiton” on them. We bought two.

Bilbo's house (Bag End) on a hill

Hobbit houses below Bag End. The large tree on the right is the Party Tree.

Close-up look at Hobbit houses, with various household items – ladder, chair, mailbox, vases, bottles, etc.

The Hobbit village cannot be seen from the public road – it is literally surrounded by, and hidden by, the rolling hills of the thousand-acre Alexander family sheep farm. After filming the Lord of the Rings, the movie set was supposed to be taken down. In the middle of removing the set, the property owner and the movie studio came to an agreement to leave the rest so that tourists can visit. That was the beginning of the Hobbiton Movie Set Tour. Since the movie set was not supposed to be permanent, the buildings deteriorated over the years. When Peter Jackson decided to come back to the same place to film the Hobbit, the set was re-built to be more permanent with the intention of leaving the entire set behind. We were so lucky to visit the new set.

Five gardeners work full time to keep the Hobbit village looking pristine. The grass is cut shorter than it was for the film, so that tourists can see the details of the village. The thatch on the roofs of some of the structures is real thatch, reeds cut from a wetland near Wellington. One tree, the large one above Bilbo’s home (Bag End), is fake (sort of). The trunk and limps of the tree was cut from a site in Matamata. All the pieces were numbered and reassembled on the site, and thousands of silk leaves made in Taiwan were imported and attached to the branches.

The tour was great, with our guide telling us inside stories of the filming, such as where the animals were kept, the fact that the Alexander farm’s sheep looked too modern, so for the movie they had to bring in more medieval-looking black faced sheep from another part of New Zealand (or from another part of the world?).

After our Hobbiton tour (and quandary about souvenirs) we got back in the car. We quickly backtracked to Matamata to make sure there really was not a Lord of the Rings souvenir shop or gift shop in town. Then we got on to the main highway to head for Auckland. The distance was 125km. On the map, it looked like we would be driving on major roads. But it took four hours, mostly on two or four lane highway. NZ really does not have much limited access highway. Luckily we started early enough so we were not late for returning the rental car before the depot (rental car places are called in NZ) closes at 5pm.

Our hotel at Auckland was very near the airport, as we had heard the city was not terribly exciting. We walked to a nearby shopping center for dinner where David had Indian food and I had Singapore fried noodles. At this point, the decent shower, good bed, watching a little New Zealand TV [it is actually mostly American TV – as far as I can tell, they only have one channel that have NZ stuff; the rest are basically American TV shows and movies; they even have NBC Nightly News! They did have a reality TV show called "New Zealand's strictest parents" (!!)] was good enough as we were psyched for the long series of flights home.

Friday morning March 9th we started early with a 4:30 am wake up call and drove to the airport to fly to Sydney where we went through in and out of Australian customs and immigration because we used different airlines between Auckland-Sydney and Sydney-San Francisco. At San Francisco, we went through the US customs and immigration, again. Because we reported that we came back from NZ and had been to the countryside and in contact with sheep, the custom agents have to clean and disinfect our hiking boots (Nice to see our civil servants actually get their hands dirty and clean our boots.) Here the layover was just a two hour wait, then on to Seattle. After a 20+ hour from start, we got back to Seattle about 6 pm and home about 7 pm. That was the end of our month-long journey.

We heard opinions that traveling for a month is too long. Typically you might long to go home by the third week. It is interesting that we didn't feel that way on this trip. Having a change in travel companions seemed to make the difference. This trip went from staying with friends at their home in Sydney to solo (if you can call a married couple "solo") in Kangaroo Island. Then came the Kepler Trek with two friends, followed by the travel with 8 others in the South Island. And finally "solo" again in the North Island. It was largely smooth sailing, and the variety made it enjoyable.