The Saunders Wander

Welcome to our newly minted travel blog! Our first stop is of course New Zealand, from which we arrived home a few weeks ago. While New Zealand is a pain in the butt to get to, it was certainly worth it, and made for a phenomenal honeymoon. We began our trip around 6:30 Friday night, with a nice sunset out the window of the plane at RDU. We had ahead of us a 6 hour flight to Los Angeles, and from there another 13 hour flight to Auckland, NZ. Though 13 hours is a long time to spend in any plane, we were fortunate at least to get to spend it in one of Boeing's newest planes, the 787 Dreamliner. We noticed almost immediately how much quieter the Dreamliner is, which apparently is due to a number of things including the plane being made out of composite rather than metal, and the shape of the engines, which allows for a quieter plane overall. Another interesting feature that we didn't notice right away (to our credit it was 2AM Raleigh time when we boarded the flight) were...

Almost without fail, the first thing anyone asked us when we said we were going on our honeymoon to New Zealand was "Ooh are you going to visit Hobbiton?!?" or some other LOTR themed question. I must confess, that was literally the first thing we booked aside from the flight. I couldn't go all the way across the globe to Middle Earth and NOT go see Hobbiton if I had the chance. This was the only LOTR themed activity we did, and trust me, there are many available. Hobbiton is a bit like Disneyworld in a way. There is an attention to detail there like I have seen in almost no other place. Interestingly, it has actually been built twice. It was originally built in a temporary form for the filming of the LOTR movies, at the end of which it was burnt down for the scene in Galadriel's mirror (this includes the Green Dragon Inn, which is where your tour ends with a beer/hard cider/ginger beer). Then, a few years later, Hobbiton and the Green Dragon Inn were re-built to t...

Day 3 was a very busy day. We had a morning tour booked at the Agrodome (use your best deep booming announcer voice for the best experience), and an evening banquet and tour at the Mitai Maori Village and Rainbow Springs animal Park. In between, we had planned to visit the Rotorua museum, but it was closed due to earthquake damage. It was a funny echo of the Louvre being closed in Paris due to flood - what's next on our natural disaster museum closure tour? Anyway, on to the Agrodome. The Agrodome is a working farm that is also set up to do farm shows and tours. Originally, it was established at the request of the government of New Zealand as a sheep show at the world expo on Osaka, Japan. It went so well that they decided to give it a go back home as an attraction. It has been open, in one form or another, ever since, and has become one of the country's top attractions. We started at the farm show, which introduced us to the different kinds of sheep raised in New Zealand...

After a long and frankly tiring day of tours on day 3, we decided not to set any kind of alarm on day 4, then get up and explore some hiking in the area. Nothing too crazy, something that might take a few hours and then we could hang out for a bit and enjoy some geothermal sights in the afternoon. Nearby Rotorua is the Whakarewarewa forest (try saying that three times fast... or once). This is a forest of many types of trees, including California redwoods, the oldest of which are a little over 100 years old. While the trees obviously aren't quite as large as their Californian counterparts, they are still quire impressive, and made for a lovely backdrop for a mid-morning hike. The forest is actually a commercial venture, though the redwoods in particular are protected from being harvested. According to their website though, it started with 170 different types of trees in the early 1900s. One of our favorite things in NZ were the massive ferns. These are not palm trees in the p...

From Rotorua, we drove south for a few hours to get to Taupo, which has the strong feel of a vacation town on a lake. It was absolutely beautiful weather that day, which was good for us and also for the people apparently competing in an Ironman competition that week as well. We got to the town a few hours before our scheduled kayaking, so we walked around town a bit and did some shopping. There was even an Ironman village set up in the large city park, which we checked out a little and scored some deals on some new bike shorts for both of us, and a nice T-shirt for Charlie. The brand we got (2XU) is Australian, and so was cheaper on that side of the world. Charlie also got some water-friendly shoes at a local sports shop called Katmandu. They were all over the place in NZ. Kind of like Eddie Bauer or North Face here. Once we had our fill of shopping, it was time to meet up with our kayaking guide for a half-day trip to some Maori carvings in Mine Bay of Lake Yaupo. The carvin...

After a lovely breakfast at the B&B of museli, farm fresh eggs, bacon, etc. we hit the road towards Waitomo, where we had three cave tours lined up, including a famous gloworm cave. Unfortunately, we slightly underestimated the NZ roads and construction and arrived a few minutes late for our first tour. The thing about NZ roads is that they are almost universally windy, two lanes, and without many passing zones. So even if you wanted to zoom along like a crazy person on the windy roads, if you get stuck behind someone slow, you are out of luck for a while at least. Luckily the company was flexible and re-booked us on the tours, so they lined up okay. We had a little time to wait around though, so we had a picnic lunch and Charlie busted out the yo-yo for a while. The first cave we toured was the Ruakuri cave. This is the only wheelchair accessible cave in the Southern Hemisphere (NZ sure does have a lot of the largest, smallest, only things in the Southern Hemisphere...). It s...