Monday 29th February

Nick got up early and went off out to do some fishing whilst I had a lie in. I woke up to the sound of hard heavy rain and him banging on the door...I opened the door to see him completely drenched looking more like he'd been swimming in the river rather than fishing at the edge of it. The weather changes rapidly in New Zealand...! We missed having breakfast again running late, including Nick standing on the table and breaking it then fixing it...drove to Hobbiton and grabbed a nice bagel to eat on the coach through to the shire. I managed to catapult half of mine in the air when we got on and wasn't happy about this. We'd failed to get raincoats back in Auckland and so borrowed one of the big green umbrellas they provide.

The tour itself was really good, Nick and I were messing around as usual fighting over the umbrella and I was knocking on the doors not realising until after you aren't allowed past the gates of the hobbit holes. It felt magical and like a place I'd love to live in the middle of nowhere with beautiful country landscape around. It was lovely to walk around and the tour finished in across the bridge and in the hobbit pub, 'The Green Dragon' where we had a cup of cider before getting back on the coach. We wandered around the gift shop and I bought some local Manuka honey hand & nail cream.

After the tour on the drive back to the town a stone hit the window screen and has caused a 2cm crack. I phoned the campervan people to let them know and they said unless it's obstructing the driver then to not worry about it. With the changed weather we decided to go on a search for raincoats and our own large umbrella. We grabbed a cheap umbrella from a pound shop type place and then the cheapest raincoats we could find were in the sale at Katmandu and not as cheap as we were expecting! I also saw an episode of a woman shop lifting, the two girls working in the shop were trying to get her to hand back the item she had stuffed in her bag and she was refusing to open this one zip and then walked out of the shop saying, "what are you going to do about it anyway", the young girl followed her out the shop and the woman started running. The girl called down to another shops security who stopped the woman and then we got in the van to leave so didn't manage to see the turnout but I felt sorry for the girl having to deal with this difficult woman.

We went back to the site, got showered and ready for the Tamaki village tour. The bus picked us up at 6.15 to the main office where we had a glass of red wine. We then got on another bus to the village where one man from California volunteered to be our group leader for entering the tribe. The whole evening was an experience learning about the Maori people and how they used to live in New Zealand. 'Kia Ora' is used a lot throughout NZ which means hello in Maori. A group of us stood in the courtyard and were first greeted by the tribe coming off their war boat and doing the Haka war dance with a type of lead being presented to our leader (along with 4 others off the other buses). Historically if this was accepted from the tribe then it meant the visitors came in peace and then a female would come out and sing. If the visitors responded in any other way then it would mean they were there for business. The war dance consisted off lots of jumping and stamping, slapping hands on thighs and the men sticking their tongues out, bulging their eyes and holding their stomachs to suggest they will eat their enemy. This of course was all staged for us and we then were led into the forest where they had around 8 separate huts set up with fires that we in smaller groups rotated around and learnt about how the people would live.

We were shown a range of things from the way they made clothes to how they would play or train and the women dance. The most interesting part I learnt about was their tattoo markings. Their face markings would almost be like a personal CV, the markings were added when you achieved a new skill. The women would only have a tattoo on the front of their chin and some of the very skilled men would have them all over their body. Each persons markings would be different and the left hand and right hand side would each have something from the mother and father so you also knew the family they are from. Nick got selected to be involved in two of the activities one where he played a game among men catching sticks and another where much to his horror he had to do the Haka dance. I found this hilarious and got some video footage. The night led onto us then having a traditional dinner which would have been cooked under ground. Nick and I chatted to the couple opposite us and a group was brought in to play music. The buses then led us home, it had been a wonderful night and
we watched some more of the Hobbit films. Nick had been joking to me for weeks that he was expecting me to propose to him with it being a leap year. I didn't propose but before we went to sleep I did tell him how happy I am to have him in my life and that I love him very much that which I'm sure he knew anyway.

xxx