Rotorua (and Hobbiton!) with the (other) Ostrowskis (December 30, 2022 - January 1, 2023)

We woke up early to get to the gym in the apartment complex (even got Jim out of bed before 8!). As we were walking outside however, we saw the tennis court and decided to give it a go — none of us are tennis players, but we’ve recently become pickleball fanatics, so it seemed like a good enough substitution. It turns out tennis is much more challenging than pickleball, but we managed to get in a few rallies that got up to 15 or so hits back and forth. 

Afterwards, the girls went for a run to the grocery store to get ingredients for a beautiful breakfast spread, enjoyed on our outdoor patio with a view out to the harbor. The next step was a long drive down to Rotorua. We had to try three different places for lunch since so much is closed during this week between Christmas and New Year.

Sean and Angie have been living nearby Rotarua for two years, and we were so thrilled to get to visit them! They had made plans that afternoon to “Zorb” — which essentially meant sitting in a big plastic ball while it rolled down a hill. For everyone besides Jim, that sounded awful, so he went along with Sean and Angie while the rest of us stayed at the Airbnb and explored the absolutely beautiful property.

Julia and Liz went for a walk through the wooded area, the vegetable garden, and the pond with the company of the property owner’s dog, while Rachel picked some lemons to make homemade lemonade. Sean and the kids came back with Jim and we all hung out over the delicious lemonade!

I had bought tickets for a Mitai Maori Cultural Experience (dinner and performance, like a luau), but when we got there our name wasn’t on the list. I looked again at my tickets and I had bought them for December 30, 2023. A full year later. They told us we could wait inside while they figured out if they could include us, but as soon as I walked into the large, stiflingly hot auditorium space with drop ceilings and fluorescent lighting, I knew that I would be happier if they couldn’t accommodate us. We told them not to bother trying, and we headed downtown for dinner. We ended up at a Thai place and got ice cream afterwards and walked down to the lake.

When we got home, we thought about continuing to watch The Hobbit in preparation for tomorrow’s adventure….but of course, we all fell asleep the minute the movie began.

In the morning, Jim, Rachel, and I took a walk through the property while Julia read by the pond.

We wanted to be sure to see some of the sulfuric landscape in town, so we went for an early, long walk through a city park with some colonial-era landscaping and buildings (including a few cricket courts and an old sulfuric spa) as well as some natural sulfuric pools. 

We went back to our airbnb and served a delicious breakfast of yogurt and berries before setting out on the most asked about part of our trip: Hobbiton!

(Every person we told we were going to New Zealand asked us if we were seeing Hobbiton -- it seemed imperative.)

Sean and Angie had guests visiting from Montana (mom Eva and daughter Mira) and they joined us for this adventure. We caravanned and we ended up taking all the girls in our car. The majority of the ride was spent making fun of me (as per usual!). I have a tough time remembering names of characters in shows, especially ones that I don’t particularly enjoy — so naturally I kept referring to the main character of the Hobbit as Bobby Binks (aka Bilbo Baggens) much to the amusement of the girls! I also got a laugh out of calling a thumbs up from the parking dude a "finger wink," but really sometimes that's just what it is!

Hobbiton itself was really cool. Even though some of us (just me?) didn't know the movies well, it was still really fun to walk into a fantasy world in the middle of rolling hills and farmland. We were a bit disappointed that you couldn’t actually go into any of the hobbit holes (they had only built out the entrances and the very first foot of Bilbo Baggens’ house), but our guide was super informative and fun!

We all got a complementary beer (or ginger beer for the non-drinkers, which I didn’t particularly enjoy) at the Green Dragon Inn. We also grabbed an Anzac biscuit (a NZ specialty cookie) and a lemon poppyseed muffin, before it was time to get back in the van and head out. 

Once we got back to our place, we decided it would be fun to check out mountain biking in the mountain bike capital of the world! Plus, the whole other Ostrowski family are very skilled mountain bikers, so we figured we’d be in good hands. While that was true, it also meant that they have a slightly different sense of “easy” than our Ostrowski family. We stuck to the easy green level trails, but they were quite hilly (i.e. scary), especially for poor Julia who had never been on a mountain bike and is very scared of heights! Luckily Sean and Angie were very patient and wonderful teachers, so we all made it — and had a great time! We only had an hour and half to ride, which was plenty of time, and Julia even went on one last final especially hilly track. 

Our New Year’s Eve plans were a combination of our two families’ traditions. Sean taught us how to make his highly requested vegetarian sushi (delicious!) and eventually we started up the New Year’s game that’s become our family’s yearly tradition — a murder mystery! We normally play it with just us 4, meaning that each person has 2-3 roles, many accents, and a whole lot of confusion on who’s who. Playing with 10 people was quite fun, although Julia and Rachel still had 2 roles each. Julia tried very hard on her German accent (and later gave up and made the character French — not sure if she could do that one either…) and Rachel did a great job on her chivalrous young male characters (as she always gets assigned). Turns out the script was appropriate for ages 16 and up — less so for Lucy, Ellie, and Mara who had all just turned 12! There were lots of affairs in the script and even a possible pregnancy (and the phrase “masculine embrace”), which caused a lot of middle school embarrassment/shock/dismay, but they took it in stride. We might not ever be invited back though! 

We checked out of our place the next morning but before leaving Rotorua we needed to make up for the show I messed up on our first night in town,
so we went to Te Puia, a Maori cultural center. We got a tour of the area, which included a huge number of sulphuric pools and the tallest geyser in the Southern Hemisphere (and one of the top 3 or 4 in the world)! They also had a kiwi enclosure! Kiwis are nocturnal, so they keep them in near pitch-black darkness during the day so we could walk through the exhibit and see them out and moving around. We were all surprised by how large they were. 

We continued on to see the traditional Maori buildings, including a traditional community center where people would meet as a tribe and, in smaller groups, would all live together. We next went to see their art center, where we saw tribe members making traditional crafts including bone/stone/wood carvings and weaving. It’s a very selective program for an artistic residency at Te Puia, and the artwork was accordingly incredible. Really cool to get to talk to the artisans themselves.

We met the Ostrowskis for lunch at the nearby Eastwood Cafe and then caravanned down to Mt Ruapehu National Park, stopping at the Huka Falls along the way. They were very impressive — enough water passes through to fill 5 Olympic size pools every minute.

We continued on the drive, making a quick stop at Lake Taupo (which was too windy and cold for anyone to swim) and at the grocery shopping to get supplies for dinner and for our big hike the next day. Once we got to the Airbnb, we cooked a big pasta dinner (carb loading!). Though there were 4 bedrooms, one was a double bunk room — the girls could’ve all split up, but instead opted for one big slumber party!