Fortunately, the weather was better for our trip back north, where we checked out Waitanguru Falls, the 14th named waterfall of this trip, before doing the Hairy Feet tour.

Hairy Feet is very different from Hobbiton. It’s a gorgeous piece of land that would be great walking in itself with its iconic cliffs, pastural setting, and incredible views.

Susie the owner is the most enthusiastic LOTR fan you could imagine and she took you around with a Lord of the Rings filming scrapbook in hand showing you where various key scenes were shot. “See that tree? That’s this tree, and that rock? That’s that rock. Oh, and that other rock is fake!” She also had plenty of props – some very scary swords!

We settled into a cozy cottage and had a wonderful clear evening to see the views right outside. (That was the last we ever saw of them.) We also had fun walking only steps away to a glow worm grotto right below our cabin.

The next day, we did the Black Odyssey tour. It doesn’t matter what the weather is like if you are going to be doing a dry cave tour – lucky choice for us, as it was pouring! There were only 4 participants on the tour. Fred and I are close to 60 and we were joined by 2 20-something Italian rockclimbers and the 2 guides.

As you can imagine, the Italians were doing the tour in fast-forward mode and I (not so much Fred), really struggled in the beginning to keep up. The 5-hour tour ended up being 3 hours. It was a lot of fun! But you can’t be afraid to get muddy and dirty. Perhaps you’ve gathered if you’ve read this far, that we aren’t. You also can’t be afraid of heights or doing a flying fox in the dark. We were game for that as well.

(I have to confess the cave pictures are not ones we took, but ones I found on the internet, since we did not take our cameras.)

We had all day the following day to make our way to the airport for our 7:45pm flight home. We hit up 2 chocolate shops and had another nice meal at the Lily Pad Cafe.

Overall, we were lucky with the weather. We heard over and over how awful a summer it had been with rain 6 days a week in Auckland for the weeks before we arrived.

As much as I love New Zealand, Fred and I agreed that 3 weeks is our absolute maximum for holiday. I think our energy level waned after 2 weeks. And getting away from business that long is harder the longer we are away. Plus, I missed my cats! Every time I heard myself say that, I felt like the crazy cat-lady.