We had an empty seat next to us and actually slept pretty well on the 15 hour flight over

Most of New Zealand is rolling green pasture land full of sheep and cows! Once the animals walk on the side of the hills enough they eventually turn into little paths like these!

New Zealanders (aka "Kiwis") are super nice and hospitable! A lot of our AirBnB hosts were retired couples who would make us delicious breakfasts and sit and talk with us about our trip, things to do, or the history of the area

Black sand beach

More like a dark brown sand beach

Seen from Mt. Eden

Volcanic crater right in the middle of Auckland. Deeper than it looks!

Utes are popular vehicles in New Zealand and Australia. Practical, fun, and affordable!

Auckland is the largest city in NZ and their downtown is very urban and feels similar to a US city

Kaitlin's ice cream is Honeycomb flavor which is called Hokey Pokey in New Zealand

A hot spring flows under this beach, and you can dig your own hot tub!

Our first hot tub wasn't very hot but then another couple gave us theirs and it was almost too hot to sit in

Kaitlin all geared up and ready to kayak

The ocean water was super clear!

"Making a raft" while our guide explains the history of the area and the significance to the indigenous Maori people

The kayak guides made us coffee on the beach

Our first experience with how steep most of the trails are in New Zealand

Like a Sprite, only better

The Hobbiton set was originally built out of foam and other temporary materials and removed after filming the LOTR trilogy. When they were getting ready to film the Hobbit trilogy, so many people had been visiting the filming location just to see the landscape that they decided to rebuild the set out of permanent materials. It took over 2 years to build the set.

This is the only one you can go "inside." It's just wooden framing inside

Bag End

This tree is made of steel! It took 10 months to build. When it was originally shipped in and installed, Peter Jackson, the director, decided he didn't like the color of the leaves and a crew had to spend 2 months hand painting over 200,000 leaves the new color

Bag End

The Party Tree! When Peter Jackson and others were scouting for filming locations they saw this tree from a helicopter and that was how they decided this area would become Hobbiton.

Any street in Hobbiton that Gandalf was filmed on had tiny hobbit holes to make the wizard look taller

Hot spring fed river

Sailboat cruise on the largest volcanic crater in the world. It's over a mile deep.

We would be going over the pass in those mountains the next day

Maori Carvings

Our captain told me the water is cold but at least a few people always swim. I dove head first off the boat and it was so cold I couldn't catch my breath. Kaitlin took this picture as soon as I surfaced.

Curious sheep right outside the front door of our AirBnB

Our longest hike of the trip. 7.5 hours of over 13 miles with 2,700 ft of elevation gain.

Devil's Staircase

Devil's Staircase

The trail levels out for a little while in this huge crater, and this is where things started getting windy

We're about to go up there

With sudden wind gusts of 40+ miles per hour and big drop offs on either side of the trail, this was the most difficult section of the trail

The Red Crater

The Red Crater

Hot air from the volcano beneath us was coming out of this vent!

The Red Crater

This downhill section was tricky, as the trail is entirely loose gravel that is constantly sliding out from under your feet

Emerald Lakes

Emerald Lakes

The loose gravel on this part of the trail would fly up into your eyes and mouth as people upwind of you worked their way down

Emerald Lakes

We sat by this lake and ate our lunch

Lunch spot

Lunch spot

Another large flat crater to cross

Where we came down from. While you're hiking, it's really hard to maintain a sense of scale for what's around you. This down hill section doesn't seem that big but it took us about 30 minutes just to descend this section.

Looking back across the crater to the peak we had come over

Blue Lake

Fortunately, there are a few toilet stops along the trail. While I was peeing in this one there was a huge gust of wind that ripped the door open!

The little strip of gravel road you can see just to the left of Kaitlin is the end of the trail, but it would take us 3.5 more hours to get down there

The steam in the distance is one of several large thermal vents in this side of the volcano

The trail winds and winds down the mountain

Still the same trail, still going downhill

Finished! Kaitlin's fitbit showing over 36,000 steps

Finished! Waiting on the shuttle to take us back to our car

The view from a distance, we came over somewhere between the two mountains. The peak on the right was used as Mount Doom in Lord of the Rings

Our trusty rental car

Another long hike the day after our longest hike, and it rained almost the whole time

This was the view from near the top, I think we would've been able to see the coast from here but instead we just got clouds

At the top, still cloudy and raining

The famous tarn! On a clear day, you can see spectacular views of the mountain behind and reflected in this lake. We were not there on a clear day.

Smiling through the pain!

The bad weather made this hike a bit of a disappointment. 5.5 hours of hiking in the wet and no good view at the top!

Another black sand beach

Truly black sand

The sand was so dark that it looked like everyone was wearing black socks

Someone had made chairs out of all this driftwood

Dipped cones are called Choc-top cones in NZ

Countdown is a popular grocery store chain, we had a lot of fun exploring this one and seeing all the different foods

Badlands style rock formation and a filming location for one scene in Lord of the Rings

After the overlook you hike down in the river bed amongst the pinnacles

Real Lord of the Rings props!

The only part of the tour where we could take pictures. He's explaining a prop making method he invented which involves making a shape out of aluminum foil and then coating it with a special resin mix that he developed. The result is very light and easy to construct models.

One of these got in our car a few days earlier!

Different species of Weta, the largest of which is the heaviest bug species in the world

The 4 species of Kiwi

Moa skeletons

Every species in this display is unique to New Zealand!

World's largest giant squid! Weighs about 1100 pounds and has eyes the size of footballs, the largest known eyes of any creature in the world

Standing in the room next to these, you expected them to stand up and start moving around because they looked so much like real giant people

Every hair was put in by hand at Weta Workshop and every detail of the skin was done by hand

I went on a night run through downtown Wellington to the top of Mount Victoria

Last view of the North Island

First view of the South Island. The water was a little rough in the strait but the last hour or so of the ride is in this bay of the South Island and the water was calm and clear

Seals!

The top of a hill just down the street from our AirBnB

Our AirBnB in Kaikoura had a hot tub!

The view from our AirBnB hot tub!

"High Seasick Warning" had lots of people on our boat getting sick

We saw several Albatross! This one had a 5-6 foot wing span

They told us to stare at the horizon if you were feeling sick. Me, Kaitlin, and most of the boat spent a lot of time staring out at the mountains.

We saw a Sperm whale, he was about 45 feet long!

A water park fed by natural hot springs, we did some water slides and then almost fell asleep sitting in this giant hot tub

Signs for the different temperatures and warning not to put your face under the untreated water

Unique rock formation

The Surge Pool

The smaller blowhole

Huge blowhole!

This beach had tiny pebbles instead of sand

We were the only ones out on the water and the lagoon was super smooth and reflective

There were signs along the hike that showed pictures of how big the glacier used to be

The sign farthest away showing the first known picture of the glacier

One of our hardest hikes and favorite parts of the whole trip, the views were amazing!

Even in this seeming remote area you have to climb over the occasional fence because there are sheep that graze here

The downtown area is on a lake and lined with these incredibly stout trees

Sheep everywhere!

Some clouds starting rolling in right before we got to the viewpoint but we got these pictures right before the clouds completely covered the view

You can just barely see the post that marks the peak. We didn't go all the way to the top because it was covered in clouds the whole time.

Typical sheep

The tree growing out in the water has been made famous by the internet because of it's unusual position

Would be a lot prettier if the lavender was in bloom! Kaitlin is imitating a blooming bush for us

Alpacas

30 second exposure with the camera sitting on top of our car. We spent this night in Twizel which is on the dark sky reserve, we drove 5 minutes from our AirBnB to get away from the streetlights and could see even more stars than this with the naked eye

Mt. Cook is in the center of this shot, that fog never cleared but the rest of the mountains that we could see were beautiful

We woke up to a warm sunny day but it was freezing in this valley and it snowed on us for about half the hike!

Overlooking Lake Tekapo

This summit is also on the dark sky reserve and there's an observatory on top with about 6 of these telescope buildings

Lord of the Rings filming location

The sun was staying up so long while we were there, this picture was taken at 8:38pm

This was the view from our AirBnB, taken at 9:15pm

This was one of our favorite places of the whole trip

Our lunch spot

The track up to Lake Marian was super rough and slippery, I fell down a couple times but Kaitlin had one hard fall and scratched her face

View of Lake Marian where we hiked to earlier

No pictures allowed inside, it was really cool though!

Waiting at the entrance to the tunnel, the sign next to the red light said over 7 minutes left to wait when we first pulled up.

If you look very closely, there's a Yellow-eyed Penguin on the beach just to the right of the rocks. This is an endangered species of penguin that nests on this beach and you can watch from a blind for them to come in from fishing for the day

The hike down to Lover's Leap went right through fields full of sheep with just marker posts and no real trail

See those rocks? We thought they were rocks, they're not rocks.

Hiking down the sand dunes

They're like big sleepy dogs

No longer the steepest street in the world as of summer 2019 but still ridiculously steep!

So steep that the sidewalks are just steps

Kaitlin did not realize until afterwards what we were standing above