Morning my love,

Finally this morning, I didn’t mind waking up so early.. There were a couple of stops you wanted to make and each of those stops would take hours so no pussy-footing around… At least that is what Haydee thought when we woke up at 5 am… Convincing myself to sleep in a couple more hours was Chrissy’s idea and it worked… Don’t get me wrong, we still were out of the place by 7:18 am a good hour before I thought I would be out…

Remembering that driving the Coromandel drive was treacherous I was hoping and praying that by leaving this early (middle morning), it would be clear… The fisherman should already have driven their boats through it and be on the water, the vacationers should still be in bed so that leaves only me on the road… Makes total sense…

Thankfully, I was pretty much the only one on that road, no one behind me trying to make me go faster and no truck or big car coming at me trying to take up the whole narrow lanes.. .It was so much more pleasant than when I arrived… Thinking back, the conditions were much different, first it was Friday afternoon on the way to a vacation spot, then I was tired and had been driving most of the day, I hadn’t really eaten in a couple s hours which meant, I was a little han-gry. Today, I am rested had breakfast and while going through the drive, it was beautiful and lovely and not so crazy… I enjoyed every turn, every little town much more than when I was driving into it… I thought it was great at first, but now I am so glad I came out here.

The drive was really pretty, I drive through all these small town roads and farms, I was really able to see so much of how the non-vacationers live.

First stop, Hobbiton :). It kind of speaks for itself, the tours though was in full force, going every five minutes.. It was really cool to see it in person, the details that the director made sure was there was really cool to see… I will have to borrow the movies from Erin and Jonathan one more time…

The pictures clearly do not do it justice, here is to trying though.

After the two hour tour, I made out to my next exciting destination and only 40 min away – Rotorua… I had done “Chrissy” style research and found Hells Gate Spa… Rotorua is known for the geometric activity, thermal pools and mud for spa… Totally up my ally… I of course had to miss the 2 hour geo-thermal tour and explanation but that was ok, I really wanted to sit in mud and have a body mud mask for an hour… These were the pools, none with me of course cause I didn’t want to dirty my phone 🙂

The last leg of the drive was to go to Taupo where I was staying. The drive again was “boringly” amazingly pretty. The side roads were great and it was smooth. Arriving with no challenges, I checked in and they happily upgraded my room to the king suite and a porch with direct access to the lake… Two beautiful black swans are just hanging out and letting me watch them.

When I arrived just after I checked in, it started to rain… Glad it wasn’t 30 minutes earlier… It’s a amazing, I can’t meet a man this whole trip but I can have a duck party without even trying.

The last parts of the evening was relaxing, listening to the rain, I ordered room service watching one of my favorite movies – Kate and Leopold.. 🙂 It’s just a sweet movie without a lot of drama…

Anyway, enough for tonight. Love you and again another great day to be alive.