Another 6:45 rise. No time for sleep while adventuring!

I walked 20 minutes into town and caught the 8:00a tour bus to the Hobbiton Movie Set. I’m not an adoring fan of that world, but I read The Hobbit and the LOTR trilogy and saw the movies, and I knew about this tour stop from seeing it in other travelers’ photos and thought it would be pretty cool.

It was amazing! The Hobbiton set for the Lord of the Rings trilogy had been made of polystyrene and was dismantled after filming concluded. When Peter Jackson began production on The Hobbit movies, he wanted to return to the gorgeous land of the Alexander farm and approached the family about building a real village out of stone and wood. They agreed and are still business partners on the tour site.

The care and effort put into the details give it a truly special feel. There are 44 hobbit holes and each is distinct. They get bigger and more elaborate the higher up the hill you go in accordance with hobbit prestige. The doors open, the surrounding orchards grow real vegetables, there is laundry strung about here and there. It’s all very adorable and charming, a word I can’t stop using about New Zealand.

Our tour concluded with a drink at the Green Dragon Inn. We were offered beer or cider, and I chose cider to drink by the fire. Cozy and charming!

After the hour-long ride back into Rotorua, I ate at Eat Streat, a covered central walkway between a cluster of local restaurants and bars. I chose Mac’s because they were still serving breakfast, and I have a bit of a breakfast fetish. Avocado toast with salmon and a hard-boiled egg and some greens and a mushroom sauce thing. Om nom.

While eating, I looked up nearby caches and saw that there was one overlooking Lake Rotorua nearby. Beautiful spot! And I found the cache, so that was a bonus.

I walked back to my Airbnb listing to regroup and take care of some business. Among other things, as I mentioned in a previous post, I was supposed to call InterCity for a refund on the canceled dolphin tour due to weather conditions. When I finally did this afternoon, I was surprised that they issued one!

I headed back out, swimsuit and towel in hand. Since I arrived in Rotorua, I’d been looking forward to visiting the mineral pools at the Polynesian Spa as they overlook Lake Rotorua. Yes, please.

It was a very windy day, and when I arrived at the spa, the power had been out for about 20 minutes. The staff estimated that the pool heat would last another hour or so if the power didn’t come back on. They also couldn’t run my credit card, and the $30 NZD ($21 USD!) entry would take up most of the remainder of my cash. It being my last day here, I went for it. Good call. The power came back on not long after I began soaking and the pools hadn’t lost any heat and I would later retrieve my cash and pay by card upon exit.

There were 7 or 8 pools of different temperatures and depth. I sat only in the two facing the lake until the sun had gone down! What an embarrassment of riches, sitting in 104 degree mineral water with a sunset view of a lake. Making my way around all the pools, I spent two hours total soaking. So relaxing. So luxurious.