Chelsa Wojciakowski: Blog Updates: There and back again: New Zealand!

Leading up to Chelsa's Stem Cell Transplant, we decided that a victory trip would in order once she made it through all of the hard stuff and her immune system was recovered enough to travel. It became kind of a fun project to plan, particularly while we need to spend a lot of time resting and laying low.

In case you don't know Chelsa well, and are new to reading our blog, she LOVES Tokien's Hobbit and Lord of the Rings... especially Peter Jackson's movie versions. Whenever she doesn't feel well, which has been too often over the past five years, she puts on one of these movies (or one of the special feature documentaries) and gets lost in the adventure.

"You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." ~Bilbo Baggins

All of that to say, there are reasons that we have not updated the blog recently... good reasons! For the past five months or so, Chelsa and I have been planning an adventure - complete with a 12-page itinerary binder - to MIDDLE EARTH!

"The world is not in your books and maps, it's out there." ~Gandalf

For anyone not in the know, Peter Jackson's Middle Earth is located in New Zealand. It's where he filmed both the Lord of the Rings triology from 1999-2000 and the Hobbit triology from 2012-2014. And while it may be on the other side of the world from us here in Seattle, we managed to find a pretty spectacular deal on Hawaiian Airlines. And, as Boromir knows: "One does not simply fly on Hawaiian Air without having an extended layover in Maui." So... this is the story of our adventure, and how we found ourselves doing and saying things altogether unexpected... ;)

"Home is now behind you, the world is ahead!"

PART ONE: The North Island

Chelsa has been fighting a cold / sinus infection for 3+ months now. We were quite worried about whether the 16+ hour flight would be miserable for her given the pressure changes right up to the day we left. She was given some antibiotics and aphrin nasal spray that did the trick though. The flight was not bad, well, besides the child behind us who managed to scream for 18 of the 16 hours, reminding us that parenting is not always as fun as we sometimes imagine it to be. We left Seattle at 8am on Monday and arrived in Auckland (NZ's largest city) at 10:30pm on Tuesday. (Auckland is 19 hours ahead of Seattle).

Auckland was amazing! #1) It was the end of Summer in New Zealand and the weather was incredible. #2) They have their own version of the Space Needle. (Called Sky City). #3) We stayed in Ponsonby, which is like a cocktail of Seattle's best neighborhood's mixed together, known for it's cute little boutique shops, hip restaurants, art scene and fantastic coffee shops all in these interesting historical buildings. We also stumbled onto this awesome little park with 12-monkeys-future-apocalyptic buildings buried in it... and a rope swing!

While we loved Auckland, it was also hard not to focus on our upcoming bus trip to THE SHIRE! Yes... the actual Shire ...like where Hobbits live, Dwarves visit, and Gandalf puts on epic wizard fireworks shows.

This is the freaking BUS STATION in Matamata (aka Hobbiton). HOW COOL IS THAT?!

Welcome to Hobbiton! (Chelsa had just hit her head on that stone wizard hat chair)

The road to the SHIRE!

"The road goes ever on and on."

The Shire is located in Matamata, NZ... which was a very rural sheep farming community prior to the Hobbits building their homes in the hillsides. We can now understand why those hairy-toed little creatures chose it. It is incredibly beautiful! Like... straight out of a storybook beautiful.

"The sun was shining, and the grass was very green."

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

"Good Morning! said Bilbo, and he meant it."

"Is it nice, my preciousss?"

To be honest, there are quite a few more photos of me (Matt) than of Chelsa in this portion of our adventure, as she was quite hard to keep up with.

"I thought up an ending for my book. ‘And he lives happily ever after,
till the end of his days.' " – Bilbo

"Sorry! We don't want any adventures, thank you. Not Today. Good morning!
But please come to tea - any time you like! Why not tomorrow? Good bye!"

I had moments of worry that she might find a hobbit home that she quite liked and would settle down with one of the little creatures... it seemed to suit her a bit too well.

"It was a hobbit hole, and that means comfort!"

Now, I know that they say Hobbits are not real, and that all that glitters is not gold... but you guys... I'm pretty sure it's not true... LOOK at this place! They did reveal of few of Peter Jackson's secrets however... like that a few of the Hobbit homes have a twin... one built Hobbit-sized, so Gandalf, Chelsa or I would look quite large standing outside...

...while one of the twin movie-magic Hobbit homes looks the same, except for being built at 1.25 scale larger... so that actors like Elijah Wood or Martin Freeman would appear to be as small as the real hobbits that normally fit into these small homes.

We were able to spend a bit of time at our friend Bilbo's house too. Interestingly, the large oak tree on top of his house is one of the only artificial pieces in the Shire... constructed entirely of steel and plastic with each of the 200,000+ vinyl leaves hand-wired onto the branches. Before filming, Peter Jackson noticed that the leaves had been faded by the sun and had each one hand-painted to match the green leaves of the other oak trees.

(Good thing we know how to party)

"No Admission except on party business!"

"I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the Ages of this world alone"

We ended our visit to the Shire at the Green Dragon Inn of Bywater. This was the kind of place that you would expect to find travelers, but still seemed surprising just how international a place it is... as New Zealand isn't terribly close to anywhere (besides Australia). We encountered folks from all over the world. Alas, there were no rangers nor dwarves to be found... still it was an excellent place to relax after several hours of wandering the shire.

"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold,
it would be a merrier world."

"Out of the frying pan and into the fire."

Chelsa WAS quite surprised to find that Gandalf (the Grey Wizard) had left his staff behind.. not sure if you can tell by the look on her face just how pleased she was about this...