A Little Out of Character?

None of you could have seen this post coming, could you?

After staring at the bizarre sights of Rotorua, I hopped on a bus for a little tour of the lovely countryside. The Waikato/King Country area of New Zealand is all about dairy farming, so the hills are spotted with a lot of cows. More cows than sheep if you can believe it.

After a pretty good drive, a rest stop at a café in a little town I never learned the name of, I stepped of the bus in an area that was surprisingly familiar…

Green, rolling hills. Lovely gardens. Beautiful houses. A lake. A pair of unique trees.

Yeah. Yeah. You’ve guessed it (if you haven’t already laid your eyes on the pictures).

I visited Hobbiton.

And I bet that absolutely none of you are surprised that I went there.

There isn’t much more to say about a visit to hobbiton except that I loved gettinga  chance to walk on the set where they actually filmed the movies. Call me a geek, but getting to walk through the areas where the likes of Ian McKellan, Ian Holm, Elijah Wood, and Peter Jackson have spent a lot of time is pretty cool. Also getting a little inside look at how they filmed certain scenes and where they filmed certain scenes was nearly all my little geeky heart could take.

I challenge you to watch the first movie and find the shot of this path

Full view

The Party Tree

The set itself was surprisingly small and big at the same time. It is probably only on two hills or so but the landscape in this area is so hilly and roll-y that two hills provide more than enough tucked away corners and hidden nooks to cram in over 40 human- and hobbit-sized hobbit holes.

A nice Hobbit-sized hole

Sam and Rosie's house that features in the last shot of the movie

So far I haven’t seen much more in terms of Lord of the Rings sets and scenery, but New Zealand does have the perfect area for the Shire. On the drive to Hobbiton, my eyes were glued to the window. It’s pretty obvious, even when you’re nowhere near the movie-set that this place was practically made to be the Shire. The hills are unlike anything I’ve seen, and they just go on and on and on.

It’s really quite beautiful actually. But, as I’ve been told, and as I’ve seen, so is pretty much the rest of this country.