New Zealand Trip Day 3 - Tauranga, Butler's Swim with Dolphins

Butler's Swim with Dolphins

Even I myself feel so surreal when I look at this picture. Did my lucky eyes really got to feast on such a stunning view?

There are only 3 companies in Tauranga that operates the swim with dolphins: the seasafaris, butler's swim with dolphins, and another company whose name I forgot. The deal is that they are supposed to find you a pod of dolphins, and if there are no baby dolphins, you get to change into some wet gear and swim with them! Or actually more like you hang onto the boat with one hand and the dolphins will come to you.  We checked the tripadvisor reviews but couldn't make up our minds at all till the very end. Butler's is a small boat with less than 10 people while the other two are bigger boats which can fit 50 people. All had good and bad reviews. Like seasafari is bigger, therefore more proper so the way they do things has more standard BUT some said they were too commercialized and that if they couldn't find any dolphins, they just go back. Butler's smaller and more cincai but supposedly got more 'feel' and that if there weren't any dolphins, they try hard to make it up to you by letting you swim with seals or something. 

Anyway conclusion is that people who managed to see the dolphins would give super good reviews while those who weren't lucky enough would trash the company. And also those who expected to be able to swim with dolphins 100% but couldn't because there were baby dolphins would be devastated and angry as well, claiming that the company was cheating...that it was almost as if the captain already knew there would be baby dolphins and they won't get to swim.... or that  it was the baby-season but they weren't told beforehand.

Being the hippies we are, we chose to go with the smaller one: Butler's Swim with Dolphins. Turned out that our cruise was the Captain Butler's last time before he retires. It made us all feel special.

It also turned out to be an all-girls trip (except for the captain and his helper who you can see at the back of the pic) yay! From the left we have an American who was travelling alone, us four then a Thai and a Jap. The cute red-head lady who helped to take this photo was Butler's granddaughter!

ship ahoy～

Living in a beautiful place like Tauranga with your own boat seems pretty awesome. Maybe something to be considered if/after I get bored of the cities.

Here's our merry captain! He looks like a summer version of santa claus (^^)

Once you go down a flight of steeeep stairs, you come to this. 

With this to your left.
 

Here's where we can boil water and make our own coffee/tea. There's a box of assorted biscuits, too. nay kidding. Just plain biscuits. I merely wanted to use the word assorted. 

This is just beside the kitchen and where we sat down to enjoy the drinks Joyce made. I found out that it's pretty nice to have someone who enjoys cooking along on trips.

Where we put our belongings. 

Lots of bunks.

please observe my fair thighs

fat thighs when will be gone arghhh,.. look like drumstick

LOVE this shot I took of Joyce

I originally thought we would be going to the middle of the sea to see the dolphins but the coast was always in sight.

observe my cute butt

oh well... since you haven't seen any pictures of dolphins yet you can guess what happened :(

yes, no dolphins :(

By 1,2 pm when there was still nothing, we kind of have 'xin li zun bei' already. Supposedly the last time Butler went out (which was the friday before), they got to see lots of dolphins. We couldn't blame anyone so we blamed mother nature. We did half-expected Butler to find us some seals or at least let us into the water. We got nothing though. He explained that the water was too cold, which was very true.

It was autumn in New Zealand and we were cold as it was already so we didn't protest much about not being able to even snorkel. The deal also included another time if you don't get to see your dolphins and Butler was willing to try again tomorrow. But it would be betting another whole day andddd in the end, we decided not to. One thing that slightly irked me was that whenever I asked when is the best season for dolphins sightings, Butler would say there's no such thing and that all year round was ok. How can that be -.- I did found out later that summer(January, February) is a better choice. 

I still enjoyed my cruise out to the sea very much today. Not everyone did though. The jap and thai girls slept inside most of the time. The american girl was alone most of the time. But yours truly got to chat with the cute helper, Sam most of the time *teehee* (god I pray he will never come across this blog). It was really fascinating to hear Sam talk bout his travels and his dreams enthusiastically. He's studying about ship stuff(?) in uni and learning the ropes hands-on during weekends by helping out Butler. He aspires to see the Pacific Ocean....by walking along the whole coast after he graduates.

When he asked me information on Malaysia and Thailand, I told him 'Yes yes, you can take a bus from Malaysia to Thailand'

'No, no. I don't want to take a bus. I want to walk along the coast

'Walk??' I echoed hollowly.

Sam predicted that it would take him 2 years to accomplish the walk. 

I was told that I shouldn't be doing things I don't like in my life (→mechanical engineering ←)

I'm as 'dreamless' as he is 'dreamful ' if there's such a word.   

By the way, In the end I found out he was only around 17 years old. God. These ang mohs all really look so mature for their age. 

  

The jap girl was quite interesting to talk to, too. And you can tell she was very grateful to have some conversation in Japanese. She was on a 9-month English program which is compulsory in her high school. Must be some super rich high school ヽ(´c_,`)  And because there's not as many Asians in Tauranga as Auckland, the natives aren't used to them and would say 'fucking asians' when the girl talked to her jap friends in japanese. Poor thing.

cool boat we came across at the harbour

the harbour in the evening

It was pretty dark when we got back so I didn't bother to push my suggestion about going to the beach. We drove to Rotorua to stay for the night after chilling out a bit.

Here's a pretty picture of me to make up for the dolphins.

$$$$$

Butler's Swim with Dolphins NZ$135

Crank Backpackers Rotorua NZ$26

New Zealand Trip Day 2 - Hobbiton, Tauranga

Hobbiton, Tauranga

That's right. Hobbiton, babe!

me likes this picture! Good enough to become a postcard

J booked our car with Ace Rental and they picked us up from the hostel. There's a few places the Hobbiton tour departs from like Matamata (the town where hobbiton is located in) and Shires Rest where the tour directly starts! We tried to key in the address for Shires Rest on the gps but it didn't show up. And so we went along with J's idea to just key in Matamata first and ask around when we get there.

To be honest, I was super skeptical at first. I had no idea no big/small Matamata is. And I don't want to end up at the wrong side of the town and waste 20mins.

Butttt my worry was totally unfounded. This information center came into our sights the moment we cruised into the town.  I should have known better. After all, Matamata is a town that practically flourished from the hobbiton tour. 

We were all super high to see this! It's only an information center, how can it be so cute

　(￣▽￣人)

See the lady there?

She was painting  on white spots to make the place look old! I guess they are doing this from time to time.

What they did with my camera when I wasn't aware lol. 

In the end we bought the tickets here (against my better judgement) instead of Shires Rest because the price doesn't change. The shuttle bus to and fro Shires Rest was provided but we have to follow the time which beats the purpose of especially renting a car. 

But anyway, after a 15-minute ride, we were at the entrance of the Hobbiton Movie Set, the Shires Rest!

 I thought it would be cuter especially after seeing the i-site. From here we changed to another bus and rode another 10 minutes with our guide giving explanations.

leng zhai ma XD? Pity he's not that leng zhai without the sunnies hoho.. i managed to sneak a peek :P

The guide's first question for us was, who hasn't watched/read lotr/Hobbiton? *the only one to put hands up* lol.. I knew I should have watched the hobbiton on plane. The guide then proceed to say that it's ok. He had a lot of customers who never watched the movie before but just came here anyway to make their friends jealous. Actually I don't know why I'm here. I'm not a fan of lotr. I attempted to watch lotr twice but failed miserably by falling asleep ten minutes into the movie. I LOVE to make people jealous *evil grin* but I don't have any friends that are die-hard fans of lotr.  I'm here because the other girls wanted to see the movie set but I'm still glad I came.

 This is how many people there were in the tour. According to J, when her friends came during winter there were only the 4 of them so they had the whole place to themselves *envy*. 

To construct the movie set, the New Zealand Army was contracted to build a 1.5km road into the site. And the whole construction took 9 months. I did not know a movie could be so.. big.

Yes, the vegetables and plants are real! It must be troublesome to have to maintain a crop. 

The guide said they had a Darth Vader last week and people dressed as Voldemort and  all sorts of costumes from time to time. And I super regret not dressing up :( The idea never crossed my mind! I look so 'out' in my cool(?) clothes.  I should have just worn bunny ears or a flowy  dress to match the fairytale background.

I love how detailed they are!! When they made the mixture they actually added yogurt in it so that the germs will breed and the wood would rot by itself afterwards. So, while the green and white parts are fake, the yellow parts are real.

I argued with Joyce saying that the clothes must be super-glued to the pegs while she insisted that the clothes are only pegged.  And so we proposed our question to the guide.

aaaand Joyce was right （｀・ω・´） The clothes were only held by pegs which are changed regularly. How can this be? The wind is so strong in nz, how can the pegs hold?? 

Since the movie hobbiton's timeline is set many years before lotr, the tree has to look smaller compared to lotr. And thus, a fake tree was shipped in! And they had a lot of other real trees shipped in, too. I think the trees each costed around 500,000 dollars and the fake tree costed a million over or something but I can't be sure. I only remember them being very very expensive.

This is the only house we were allowed to go up close and take pictures. One thing I dislike about the tour is that there wasn't enough freedom. The guide brings us to one spot and starts to explain. So we can only choose to either listen to his explanations or camwhore. Then when he leaves we have to follow. We can't loiter around or stroll at our own leisure. There was another rombongan(I can't recall the english word for it) a few spots ahead of us and another rombongan a few spots behind us so I can understand why we have to follow the tight schedule.  But I didn't pay NZ$75 (rm185) to be herd around like a sheep. And for this photo, everyone had to line up so you have to hurry up and take and leave regardless if you liked the photo or not.

I lined up a second time just for this photo ヾ(*・ω・)ノ The girls also lined up for a second shot but TY and J left when Joyce and I took a few more shots. They felt paiseh and bu hao yi si to let other people wait anymore. Must have soaked up too much of Japanese humbleness over the years. But it's not like we took our sweet time. We were practically running from pose to pose. Plus the only ones behind us was a couple and they insisted that we go ahead first because they wanted to take their time.

And finally! A little time of our own!

Behind me is the Green Dragon where we had a complimentary drink and some time for ourselves.

I assumed in the movies, the green dragon is a pub(?)

I love the fireplace! So cosy. They have 2 different drinks we could choose from. The drinks are especially made for the Green Dragon so you don't get to drink it anywhere but here in the WHOLE wide world...for now anyway. They are trying to change the rules or patents or something so they can sell the drinks outside as well. These people are seriously racking in tons of money.

damn you blogspot -.- 

This is the party tree where the hobbits held their events (at least I believe so). This photo doesn't do the tree justice. It's incredibly huge and magnificent and I was like wahhhh when I saw it from afar.

That ended our two-hour tour and we were brought back to Shire Rest where we have less than 5 minutes before our bus back to i-site departs.

                                          

Look at all the gorgeous places I can't stop to take a picture. 

Because I'm on a shuttle bus instead of our own car (。-_-。). I wanted sooo much to come down and take some photos with the sheeps.

We walked around the Matamata town a bit before we drove to Tauranga.

Teach me master!!!

By 5,6pm we were checking into our hostel for the night in Tauranga. The receptionist was a lot kinder and useful compared to nomad fat camel's. We found that the harbour we have to go for our "swim with dolphins" the next day is just a 15 minutes drive away. And that all shops are already closed except for the pubs. Also asked directions for the supermarket.  

We contemplated between going to the beach (i think going to a beach at night can be pretty fun!) or checking out the town and we went with the latter.

scary looking clowns

Tauranga would have been a very romantic town to stroll around at night.. if I was with a guy lol

The town was so small and easy to navigate that Joyce and J knew the way back to the hostel after driving to the town and supermarket without having to look at the map or use the gps o.o!!

We were back pretty early and I ate my instant mee while the girls cooked XD. 

In conclusion, today was good but could have been better if we could have gone to another place. I so wanted to go Waitomo Caves for the glow worms :( But the girls wanted this to be a relaxing trip. And while I dislike those hectic trips where I have to wake up super early and move from one spot to another without any time to take in the beauty (I'm speaking of the tour I went on Beijing), I don't enjoy spending 5 hours doing nothing in the hostel. If we had more days in nz or if the plane tickets had been cheap, I wouldn't have minded at all. Besides if I wanted a relaxing trip I could have just stayed back in Japan and ごろごろ in my room. Surely it has to be more relaxing to be in your own room than to be in a hostel room that's not even a resort?

Last but not least, please enjoy this photo of me pretending to be cute.

And also this photo of me naturally walking.

$$$$$

hobbiton movie set tour - NZ$ 75

YHA Tauranga - NZ$ 25

Ace Rental Cars (for 3 days after dividing by 4 ppl) - NZ$ 47