Selcouth Chronicles Week 7
Hello family and friends! Welcome to week 7 of our Selcouth Chronicles.
Week 6: February 18th - February 24th
🚗Feb. 18 Taupo->Rotorua->Auckland
🚗Feb. 20 Auckland->Hobbiton->Auckland
🛫Feb. 21 Auckland->🛬Hamilton Island
NEW ZEALAND and AUSTRALIA
Highlights: Rotorua River Rafting, Hell’s Gate, Auckland Museum, dinner with friends at Mission Beach, Hobbiton movie set, the view from Passage Peak, spotting wallabies, Whitehaven Beach
Sean:
This week was a momentous one for me, as touching down in Australia meant that I can officially check all seven continents off my list. It’s a goal that I wasn’t chasing per se, but now that I have done it, it’s put me on cloud nine for the end of the week. And what a week it was!
Sunday we left Taupo early and drove a couple hours to an area just north of Rotorua. There we went on a rafting tour that may have been the highlight of the trip thus far. I think we’d all do it again, so if you find yourself in New Zealand, make sure to look it up. As we left the rafting, we passed signs for Hell’s Gate, and decided we should check it out. Turns out it was a geothermal park with mud baths and a walking tour. Not being in a place to take a bath, we did the walk and got to see why George Bernard Shaw gave it the name when he visited. After an ice cream stop, we finished the drive to Auckland. It was an eventful time getting settled for the night (ask us about it sometime).
In Auckland we visited some friends, which allowed James and Abby to have a well-deserved play date, visited the Auckland Museum, and drove down to Matamata the morning before our flight to look for hobbits. Hobbiton is a really fun experience and gives you a chance to see why they chose the area for the movies. The next day we boarded our plane to leave New Zealand behind and flew to Hamilton Island, Australia.
For the first time, we are in a place where others are also vacationing during summer, and it’s a very different experience. There are no cars allowed on the island, so the kids get a kick out of the buggy that we have to drive around town. We’ve mostly done some hiking, swimming, and then went out to Whitehaven beach for a full day cruise experience. Throw in some wallaby sightings, and Australia is off to a great start.
Caitlin:
Leaving New Zealand this week was bittersweet; we were all excited to be heading to Australia but sad to be departing a place where we’ve had so many fun experiences!
With only two weeks in this huge country, we decided to choose only two locations and spend enough time in each one to explore them well instead of trying to see everything. Naturally, the Great Barrier Reef was at the top of things we wanted to see in Australia, so we are starting our time here in Whitsunday Islands National Park, on Hamilton Island. The Whitsundays are a group of about 74 islands in the Great Barrier Reef. As Sean mentioned, it’s a very different feel here from everywhere else we’ve been so far because every other person on the island is also on holiday. People don’t live here unless they’re working in tourism. It makes for a different atmosphere from other places we’ve been so far, but it’s still fun!
Sean works during weekdays, so the kids and I spend that time exploring wherever we are. There are no private cars allowed on Hamilton Island, and James and Abby have been thrilled that our current mode of transportation is a golf cart/buggy. On our first day here we cruised around the island in our buggy, stopping at shops, an art gallery, and a wildlife center, before heading to one of the free pools on the island. There are a few beautiful beaches, but summer here is Stinger Season and we’re not wild about risking getting stung by Irukandji jellyfish, so we stuck to the pools and admired the beach from the sandy edges. The next day we did a hike to Passage Peak, the highest point on Hamilton Island. It was a hot walk to the top, but we were rewarded with cool breezes and a 365-degree view of the Whitsundays from the summit!
On Saturday we booked ourselves a full day cruise to explore the surrounding area. Many of you know that when I was in high school my family lived in Perth for a semester, on the West Coast of Australia. At the end of our time in Perth we spent a month traveling the other side of the country, starting from Cairns and moving southward to Sydney before heading home to Minnesota. That means I’ve actually been lucky enough to see the Great Barrier Reef once before, and in addition to the reef itself, one of the things I’ve been looking forward to here was returning to Whitehaven Beach. It is truly one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. If you close your eyes and try to picture a beach with turquoise water and white sand I’d be willing to bet that the image in your mind is pretty close to Whitehaven. The white silica sand is so fine that it actually squeaks when you walk on it. Choosing the full-day cruise allowed us to land on Whitehaven Beach and also be taken via a smaller boat to Hill Inlet, which has a small hike up to three lookouts over the beaches. It’s definitely worth spending the extra time to make that trek. We were there in between tides and the view was quite good, but if you’re lucky enough to come at low tide you can see the signature swirl of white sands under the water even more clearly and it’s lovely!
After the hike we took a dip in one of the bays on that side of the island before taking the boat back to Whitehaven. But what about the jellyfish? No worries, our cruise equipped us with stinger suits! If you’ve never seen one, it’s like a wetsuit, except thinner and less flattering. It’s basically a lycra bodysuit, complete with mittens, stirrup straps, and a hood. The only purpose is to cover as much of your body as possible, and that it does well. The fact that you look a treat in addition to being safe is a fun bonus… but I’d rather look bad than feel bad, so on went the stinger suits.
Once we made our way back to the shuttleboat we were ferried back to Whitehaven Beach for a barbecue lunch and lots of free time to hike or enjoy the beaches. The water here is so warm that it was easy to spend most of the afternoon in the ocean. So easy, in fact, that when it started to sprinkle in our last hour on the beach we hardly noticed… until the sprinkle became a steady rain, and then a harder rain. We finally got out of the water and joined the huddle of people under the pop-up canopies brought by our cruise company, and we all departed the beach about half an hour earlier than planned. It was a bummer, but on the bright side it did make it easier to say goodbye to Whitehaven! We felt lucky that we had opted for the full day and got to enjoy hours of fun at the beach before being rained out. Sometimes that’s what happens when you visit the tropics in the summer!
Abby:
When we first got to New Zealand, Mom, Dad, and James all urged me to watch the famous Lord of the Rings, because it was filmed there. I wasn’t very pleased, for I am not the type for any movies with gore whatsoever. But, reluctantly, I got myself to watch the first movie. Aaand the second. And. . . the last. Okay, I ended up liking it. REALLY REALLY liking it. One of the reasons they all wanted me to watch LOTR was because we booked tickets to see the set of Hobbiton, the town lived in by Hobbits in the movies, tiny elf-like people.
I was very excited to go on our tour even before I watched the movies, but especially excited afterwards. When we arrived, I was amazed by the beauty of the rolling lush green hills dotted with white spots of sheep. We had to wait for a while for the tour to start, but even that was fun, watching the ducks in the pond and looking at the scenery. Later, our tour guide (Troy, who had an awesome mustache) gathered all of us around, put us on a bus and drove us a good distance over the hills to the entrance. He talked to us about Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (for anybody who didn’t know what the heck they signed up for) and then we took a short walk through the woods to get to the actual set. This made the opening even more grand, as the woods cut off abruptly and revealed the “town” of Hobbiton. The little round doors were adorable to glance at, stamped into the hills. Troy also pointed out Bilbo Baggins’ mansion (at least by Hobbit standards), which was awesome to see because you realize, “This set that I am looking at in real life was in a movie!”
After admiring the view of the whole town, we headed down a bit further, where Troy stopped us. The place that we were standing was almost exactly where one of the first scenes were filmed, where Gandalf shows up in his fireworks cart and Frodo jumps along for the ride. Then, we were told a few minutes later that, now, this was the place that the little kids got their firecrackers from Gandalf the Grey.
It was all very magical. There were little details in every set, like a table of chopped herbs and mushrooms for where the town herbalist lived, honey for sale where the beekeeper lived, and cheese for sale from the farmer. Troy kept pointing out scenes, like where Gandalf pulls Samwise through the window of Bilbo’s house after Sam hears about the Ring. Or, at the very end of the movies, after Frodo and Gandalf leave on the boat, and Sam’s new family is waiting for him at his house after he comes home. One cool fact that we learned about that scene was that apparently Sean Astin (Sam)’s daughter was the one who played his daughter in the movie, and Sarah Mclean (Rosie)’s daughter plays the baby she’s holding. I thought that was pretty cool! Seeing the set, I could almost picture the actors standing there.
The only thing was, unfortunately, most of this town was only models. The inside filming was done in the studios. But, they did take the time to do the inside of two homes specially for the tours. We were split into two groups and one was taken in a blue-door house, and one that was a beekeeper’s home (that was us!) I was very happy the moment we stepped in because everything was Abby-size! We took tons of pictures of me with my perfectly sized kitchen, beds, bathrooms, couches, everything. I loved all the details they put into the houses; it looked almost like it was being lived in.
After we admired the marvelous details of the little Hobbit home, it was time to head to the Green Dragon, a tavern that everybody went to at the end. The one thing about Hobbits was the fact that, yes, they drink.🍺 A lot. Luckily, they had an option for kids (and Mom!) of Ginger Beer. After enjoying our drinks, we sadly had to go. We took the bus ride back and I got a Lord of the Rings hat at the gift shop. For anybody who likes LOTR, or beautifully detailed sets, I highly recommend this magical place!
James:
I love excitement and adventure, so ever since Mom announced that we would be going river rafting in NZ a couple weeks back, I had been on the edge of my seat waiting for that moment, and Rotorua Rafting did not let me down! In fact, they exceeded my expectations, although my poor contact lenses did not survive the journey. Luckily for me, they did manage to stay in through the ride, so I could see every glorious(ly wet) detail.
The hardest part was getting my gear on, which included zip-up “boots” that were made out of rubber and a wetsuit vest. Then the safety briefing, bus ride, paddle handout, signal orientation (ex, “Paddle left!”), and figuring out who sits where. I sat in front with Dad, Mom was in a seat behind us, and two very friendly fellow rafters and our guide were in the back. Abby wasn’t getting on yet because we would be rafting Level 5 - max difficulty - for about the first half. She’d join us further down, where it transitioned into a Level 3.
The river at the start was slow, so there was a lot of paddling forwards and looking at the scenery, which was so green it looked like someone had dumped paint on the landscape. After a couple minutes our guide interrupted everyone’s little moment to teach us a very important command: get down. When he yelled it, you had to wedge yourself into the very bottom of the boat, grab the rope, get the paddle secured, and tuck your head. This was used only for drops and if you didn’t do those things you could be punished in a million different ways. The consequences ranged from biting your tongue to being violently thrown off the boat, depending on what you did wrong, so we all followed that command very carefully indeed.
We were going to need to remember it, because right then we hit our first rapid. The raft picked up speed and began to slalom through the rocks, even occasionally hitting one, which resulted in a lot of violent jolts and spinning around. The result? An adrenaline rush like no other. I was smiling the whole way down! It continued like that for a good long while, and our guide loved to run us into waterfalls we had just gone over to get us soaked. Then we came to the main event: the Tutea Falls, the highest commercially rafted waterfall in the world. It’s a 7-meter, purely vertical drop into a massive pool. No seat belts, no safety harnesses, and no bailing out. The drop lasted a full five seconds, and it felt like I’d never hit the bottom - until I did. I came up sputtering but jubilant - I’d done it! I’d rafted off a waterfall!
We had a long stretch of calm water to wind down afterward, which was when Abby joined our raft and sat next to Mom in the center. The rest was the same as the beginning, except no more waterfalls - just rapids. But on those rapids came my favorite part - the cowboy. The cowboy was a stunt maneuver where one person gets to sit on the very tip of the raft and goes over a small drop in the rapid. I was that rider.
It was really awesome! I was hurtled upward and then plunged down, hitting the water so hard that the raft flew right back up again. It was right then that I lost my grip. I soared through the air, then hit the water hard, but it didn’t hurt and I came up smiling! Then the river took me downstream and I was rescued by a guide in a kayak who deposited me onto a little rock ledge. My raft stopped there too, and everyone got off to take a swim down the river. I’d already taken an impromptu one, so I wasn’t at all scared. After our quick dip, our group all got back on the raft and the experience ended shortly afterward. Everyone changed out of their half-wetsuits and had a laugh over hilarious photos from the journey.
River rafting was an experience I’ve been wanting to try all my life and I will forever remember it. My bucket list has one more thing checked off! Speaking of experiences, I hope that our newsletter inspires some of you readers to have your own adventures and check things off your own bucket list. If you do, I have one piece of advice: go rafting!
See you next week!
Sean, Caitlin, James and Abby
