Rollin. . .

Have you ever felt like you a hamster? Does the sight of wood make your front teeth tingle with delight? Do you sleep in small burrows and store food in your cheeks? Then listen to this!
Those crazy Kiwis have invented Hamster Balls for Men© , also known as Zorbs© . Do not miss your chance to roll down a hill in huge plastic ball and experience for yourself what hamsters have been experiencing for the last hundred years! (Disclaimer: this number is a rough estimation, not a fact) Squeak with delight as experienced Zorb handlers push you down a hill!
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We awoke, unexpectedly, with only slight muscle ache and were feeling fresh and ready for the day! The plan was to go Zorbing and visit the local mud geysers, but when we arrived at the bus stop we found that the busses only go till 3 O'clock and we’d spent so long talking to people during breakfast that we would have only had 1 hour to Zorb before the last bus would come to pick us up. We reckoned this was a bit too tight for comfort and we didn’t want to feel rushed (not to mention that the thought of being stranded in the middle of nowhere wasn’t particularly appealing to us) so we decided we’d go the next day. Having decided this, it took us a long time to figure out what we’d do instead, we ended up spending half a day in an internet cafe and the rest in the cinema. We went to see a movie called Zombie Land, which is quite a fun movie if you like macabre humour and unnecessary violence against the undead, which we do.
The next day we caught the bus and set off to Zorb© . We had a choice between a wet Zorb, and a dry one. The wet one involved being rolled down a hill in one of those big hamster balls after they let a bit of water in it, so that when you slip you don’t go tumbling through the ball but get a more waterslide-like experience. The dry one involved getting strapped inside the ball tightly so you can’t move while they kick the ball down the hill and you lose all sense of up and down.
We decided the wet Zorb was for pansies and did the dry Zorb, despite Jasper feeling slightly nauseous. After strapping myself in they removed the gate that was keeping the ball in place and slowly it started to roll down the hill. Slowly but surely the ground was coming towards me as I started my first revolution, my body started to feel heavy in the straps and before I knew it I was upside down. The ground slowly traded places with the sky once more and after that they merged into one big blur as I lost track of what was up and what was down. I could feel the ball gaining speed and eventually it started to develop a small bounce as well. Unfortunately the whole experience was over too quick and soon I exited the ball and walked back to the side in a more or less straight line. Even though at 40 bucks the 30 second ride was a bit of a rip-off, it was an interesting experience that I wouldn't want to miss for anything.
Afterwards we went back to our hostel and booked our trip to the shire (aka Matamata).
We got picked up the following morning and arrived at hobbiton tours (and sheep farming experience), here we were shipped onto a big bus full of other Lord of the Rings tourists and driven through a country filled with rolling green hills and lots of sheep. Lots of sheep. The girl behind the wheel of the bus gave us some background information on the countryside and pointed out places where certain scenes were filmed. "This is where Frodo stood when Gandalf arrived on his cart, and there way off in the distance is where he jumped down to to reach Gandalf, so Frodo had quite a mighty jump".
When we arrived at hobbiton they let us out the bus and allowed us to walk around freely. The main attraction here were hobbit holes that were still more or less intact, due to copyright issues they weren't allowed to be completely intact, they consisted of white plywood outlines of the hobbit holes scattered across the hill. There was nothing behind their little doors as obviously all the inside scenes were filmed in a studio, but to us LotR nerds it was a lot of fun to be there.
We soon found out though that as far as being a LotR nerd goes, we were newbs. As the people around us were discussing what other movie sites they visited, who got tattoos of the tree of Gondor and why one of them named her son Elijah we felt sort of out of place, we were too normal to fit in. Turns out we were in luck, because as we were walking through the hobbit holes we noticed a guy on top of the hill putting flowers in the garden of bag end. Turns out they are going to be filming for the Hobbit soon and they were fixing up bag end for a promotional photo shoot of some sort. After the tour they took us to a small barn and showed us how they sheered sheep. Afterwards we were all handed a bottle of milk and told to go outside. All of a sudden about 12 baby sheep ran passed us desperately trying to grab the milk bottle from our hands. Jasper didn't want to, but they were so cute that I couldn't resist feeding them and petting them as they greedily downed the bottle of milk.
When we got back to the van our driver got us some lunches that his mother prepared for us, I thought this was really thought of her and gratefully ate the small cake that was in the bag.
The next day we made our biggest sign yet and were headed for Whakatane, as we walked out of the hostel we were accompanied for a small while by an American guy we met there who was covered in tattoos from back when he was in a speed metal band. He was a really nice guy, though sometimes a bit strange, so it was nice of him to walk with us at least to the point where he had to wait for the bus.
While we were standing at the edge of town with our massive sign (I could hardly open it fully because my arms were a tad too short) and after a while we got picked up by a guy who promised to take us to the exit to Whakatane where we'd have no problems getting a ride.
And sure enough, after a few minutes a lady stops for us and tells us she's not going all the way to Whakatane but can get us halfway if we want. As we accepted her offer I noticed she had an accent so I asked her where she was from, though I had a sneaky suspicion I already knew.
She said she was Dutch.

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