We made it!!  Wow!

We met with a Maori chief and we’re greeted in the traditional way. We learned the traditional Maori greeting, the hongie.

Then we experienced our Day of the Rainbow!

First, outside our hotel came a beautiful, clear rainbow which morphed into a double.

Then, on our drive to Rotorua came EIGHT more and here are pix of the ones I could snap,

This pretty much made the ride great!  But what came afterward made it truly wonderful!  Yay!  Made it to probably the most famous town in these parts.

Some of the places we saw were the meadow where Frodo ran down the hill to begin his great adventure, the Green Dragon in the distance beyond the double arched bridge, Bilbo and Frodo’s house with the steps and little bench, the blue door of the house belonging to the gardener, Sam’s house with the yellow door, and the green dragon carving over the bar in the Green Dragon.  What a fun day!!

We learned some of the secrets of the films.  The set was first built out of plywood and polystyrene but all dismantled after Lord of the Rings.  When The Hobbit came along Peter Jackson went into partnership with the farmer on whose land the film was set to build permanent buildings.  It took months and had huge cost overruns but they’re making money hand over fist now with an average 3500 people each day in the summers.  Now we’re going to have to watch all six films again to see if we can catch the things the guide told us about.

We will be seeing more of Middle Earth as we go along but I can tell you right here and now, New Zealand is as spectacular as I ever could have imagined!

NEEDING OUR 10,000 steps we left the pier, bought jewelry for the daughters, checked out a pair of Nikes I wanted but they cost $950, had lunch, and went to the museum.  Here we saw Lubyu, a 42,000 year old, one month old baby wooly mamouth!

She was found in Siberia where she had fallen into some water and drowned.  It was so sad but the people curating her got lots of info about her geneology and customs and care.

Surprise! Here is the skull of a wooly mamouth found in Wyoming by one of my professors, Dr. Mears, shortly before I began my years at the U of Wyoming!

The whole display of mamouths, mastodons, Asian and African elephants was really amazing.

Here is just one of the fantastic displays.  Not to harp on it too much but the elephant population world wide is steeply declining and this is due mostly to habitat reduction and poaching. PLEASE people.  Do we really need ALL the land and ivory?

Yes, we also saw dinosaurs, birds of the world, the 200 most special things the museum had to display, and so much more.  This fine facility is really a great addition to one of our favorite Antipodaean cities!

Tomorrow we leave for New Zealand, also referred to as Middle Earth!

This day was a free day for us to do what we wanted.  Yesterday on our Harbor tour we saw all these old boats so we wound our way to the Australia Maritime Museum.

First up was the battleship Vampire.  It served through then’70’s. Mark marveled over the guns and the wiring.  There must be a million miles of wires strung throughout this ship.

Next was the submarine, Onslow.  Okay, I know I’m not tall but it was a real tough slog to try to get up and down the hatches and through the water tight door portals.

This is the view inside up the conning tower.

Just a few gauges.

This is where they maintain the ballast.

Need something fixed?  Hang on a minute and I’ll grab my tools.

I’ll post pix from the Australia Museum on another post, but first!  Endeavor!  This is the ship Captain Cook sailed around the world in.  Glad I wasn’t in this one too as they had added a deck which meant I had to stoop to get from one end of the second deck to the other!