Rotorua, New Zealand

A short drive south of New Zealand is Rotorua, a city built in the exploded crater of a very active volcano!

In the 1980's, sensors were burried in the ground with a view to giving the residents of Rotorua approximately two weeks notice in the event of the next major eruption. We didn't stick around long enough to find out if they work!

On our arrival, we attended a Maori cultural show where they performed a Haka up close and personal. We were then treated to a traditionally prepared meal and an after dinner walk through the forest to see glow worms in their natural habitat.

The next day we hiked around the thermal parks in the area, checking out tons of bubbling mud pits and a surreal landscape of steaming rocks. Steam was coming out of the ground everywhere, even out of the post-holes for the fences!

We also witnessed the huge Pohotu geiser erupting, sending high pressure water shooting 15 meters in the air. It was really spectacular!

Hobbiton, New Zealand

If you've seen the Lord of the Rings movies, or just read the books, or perhaps read "the Hobbit" by JRR Tolkien, then you'll know all about Hobbiton, "the Shire" and Bag-End, the home of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins!


We visited the remains of this peaceful little movie set on our way to Rotorua, New Zealand.

The set was built on a picturesque little sheep farm near Matamata and kept a well guarded secret until the movies came out in 2001. 17 of the original 37 hobbit-holes still remain but their original movie "trimmings" had to all be removed for copyright reasons.

The "party tree" where Bilbo disappears from is still there; all the more impressive in real life to see that a tree like that actually exists! The hobbits have all been replaced by lambs and sheep now but that's not all that surprising.

The human population of New Zealand is approximately 4 million and there are nine sheep to every one human (down from twenty to one in the 1980's). I'm not kidding. The sheep have all but run for office. If aliens landed on earth tomorrow and chose New Zealand as their landing strip, I think they would greet the sheep with impressed glances and congratulate them on the domestication of the human.



Feeding the lambs after the the private sheering demonstration we had.

The Sky Jump

At 328 metres tall, Auckland's Sky Tower is the tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere and offers incredible views for up to 80 kilometres in every direction.

Something that big deserves to be climbed and/or jumped off of! We chose the latter of the two options; less time required. The glass elevator ride to the top was pretty neat too.

The jump takes place from the top skydeck, 192 meters up. During the descent, you reach 83km per hour.

It's not so much like a bungy jump, more like a parachute base jump as your body achieves the same free-fall position as skydiving.

Given the full body harness, my amazing suspension system and an extra safety line tied around my ankle (just in case), I was allowed to wear my leg for the jump.

Even at 192 meters (as opposed to the full height of the tower), the skydeck is the tallest point a person can be in Auckland meaning that you're automatically looking down on every skyscraper's roof. It's enough to weaken the knees!

A view of the skydeck in relation to the rest of the city.

Lisa taking her leap!

I came in for a perfect one-footed landing to absorb the impact then stepped down onto my prosthetic with style.

Across the Pond to Auckland, New Zealand

The last long weekend of the year... that's a lot of pressure for one little weekend!

Lucky for us, Auckland is a short 4 hour swim from Brisbane so with a $99 seat sale taunting us, we couldn't say no.

This was my first international flight with a prosthetic leg, so I really didn't know what to expect. By all reports, I was going to be asked to take my leg off, put it on the belt scanner and hop through the metal detectors. This was not a prospect I was looking forward to.

Fortunately, this was not the drill. I was allowed to walk through like everyone else followed by a quick run by with the "wand".

The second challenge was travelling without my crutches. Not for normal mobility, just for those pesky middle of the night wake-up calls and for getting in/out of the shower. Enter the collapsible hiking poles Matt gave me. When taken apart, these fit neatly in my travel backpack. When assembled, these allowed me to get around with ease after my leg was off at night.

Auckland is home to the tallest structure in the southern hemisphere, the Sky Tower. We woke up on the first morning looking out at this huge monolith from our hotel window less than a block away. As you can imagine, that was one of our first and last stops of the day!

From the top, Auckland's city scape is incredible. The food in the revolving restaurant is even better. From the top you can see the whole city stretch out beneath your feet.

Auckland also boasts several volcanic islands within a stone's throw of the city, great for quick hike on a chilly day! One of these is Rangitoto, easily accessible by a short ferry ride. On a very cold day, we went up Rangitoto and walked the rim of the volcano then hiked down to the lava caves below. These were really cool!



The caves were tens of meters in length and cartoonish in appearance. They were straight out of an Indiana Jones movie with vines and a tiny speck of daylight indicating the far end of the tunnel. At several points along the way, we had to crouch down to get under the four foot high (meter and a half) tunnel ceilings.



One cave tunnel was long enough that we had to take a real leap of faith that it would have an opening on the other side! Enter handy leg-bag flashlight to guide our way. We wouldn't have gone far without that handy bit of MacGuyver-tech.

Quick facts about New Zealand:

New Zealand was the first major nation to have universal suffrage. In 1893 it became legal for all male and female citizens of New Zealand to vote.

It was also the first country to have its three top positions of power held simultaneously by women: The Prime Minister (Helen Clark), the Governor General (Dame Silvia Cartwright), and the Chief Justice (Sian Elias).

Lake Taupo, the largest freshwater lake in Oceania, was the source of the largest known eruption in the world in the last 70 thousand years.

New Zealand was the last major landmass to be populated (with the exception of the polar regions).

Nobel Prize Winner and New Zealander Ernest Rutherford is known as the father of nuclear physics for his orbital theory of the atom.

Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to reach the peak of Mount Everest was born in Auckland and his face is on the New Zealand $5 bill.

Auckland's skyline at night.

A nice dinner on our last night in Auckland.

Rough Cut of New Zealand

Took a quick trip across the pond this weekend to a land where the sheep outnumber the people and Hobbits are commonplace. We are of course in New Zealand!

We're currently staying the night in the center of a giant volcano in Rotorua. There are tons of natural geisers and thermal vents in the area making for an amazing landscape of steam and warm springs.

Oh, and we jumped off the top of the tallest structure in the southern hemisphere yesterday!











More to come soon!
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