Auckland's Sky Tower lights up the downtown city center. A combination of restaurants, bungee jumping from the top, and casino, it's a fan favorite of the large Asian population we've found here. 
The Auckland University is nicely laid out and has many beautiful architectural highlights, like this church.And, it seems, water is everywhere. Here is the Auckland harbor, viewed from the museum up on a hilltop. The city reminded us a lot of San Francisco, actually, with the hilly streets, bay views, cool, misty temperature, and genial, laid back atmosphere.
In the middle of the city is a large jungle featuring many lush walking paths, where one can easily get lost (or hide!) among the all the greenery and forget that you are still in the middle of the country's largest city. 
We found new fauna as well, such as this two-tone gerbil-like animal taking a midday snack.
After a few days to recoup and explore Auckland, Tiff and I rented a car and our real New Zealand "tramp" (their word for adventure) began! The Kiwis drive by English tradition, on the left side of the road with steering wheel on the right. After a number of misadventures in the wrong lane, and a few bruised curbs left in our trail, we've adjusted fairly well. For the most part we just drive very slowly; luckily, as they say here, you'll see more sheep than people in your travels!
Our first stop was Mata Mata, home to Hobbiton, the only remaining set preserved from the filming of the Lord of the Rings trilogy by Peter Jackson, New Zealand's favorite son. It was a great tour, with fanatically devoted tour guides quoting passages from the movies verbatim, citing minute differences between the original novels and the movie, and even encouraging us to put on our costumes if we'd brought them (and apparently many of their guests do, in order to recreate famous scenes!) We'd found New Zealand's version of "Trekkies". And with the high spirits of the guides and beautiful scenery all around us, we couldn't help but get swept up in the magic.
In the cafe waiting to start the tour, Tiff catches me checking a wall mural for Hobbits.
Underneath the famous Party Tree, where Bilbo Baggins celebrates his 111th birthday in the first Lord of the Rings movie, Tiffany recreates some of the heel-clicking party.
17 Hobbit homes were preserved in the hillside and available for our viewing pleasure.
Nowadays they are guarded by 12,000 sheep that roam the privately owned farm. For the movie, though, which was supposed to take place in England, English sheep were flown in for the movies. How's that for authenticity!?! According to our guide, the New Zealand sheep are still reeling from the embarrassment of not making the final cut.
Tiff and I found a new vacation home, right here in Hobbiton! 
Being that this was, and still is, a working 1,200 acre sheep farm, the tour included a demonstration of sheep shearing by Matt, the local sheep expert, and let us try our hand at bottle feeding some of the young lambs.
This sheep is clearly uncomfortable knowing that Matt is about to shear her naked in front of a bunch of dorky Hobbit fans.
Post-shearing - We had to take this picture twice - the first time Tiff thought the sheep hadn't been shorn when she accidentally pet Matt's woolly chest. The look on her face? Priceless.
This photogenic lamb must be the spokesperson for Sheep Against Lamb Chops.
Our drive led on to Rotorua, a scenic lakeside town that featured sulphur hot springs and smelled mildly of rotten eggs throughout the town.
The lake, however, was beautiful, and Tiffany got a chance to check out their famous black swans up close. 
We have been starved for clear blue, pollution free skies for almost 3 years now, and spent a long time strolling along the lake and soaking up the natural beauty.
Now we are in Lake Taupo, another, you guessed it, waterside town. Here Tiffany admires the Huka Falls, a stunningly blue rapids that runs through town.
After Huka Falls we visited Craters of the Moon, where we walked through what seemed to be a prehistoric preserve, full of smoking sulphur pits and colorful craters, still alive with bubbling mud lava and periodic eruptions of pumice and ash.
Tiffany sampled her first meat pie, a local culinary favorite. These tasty treats also cause uncontrollable napping, and Tiff was fast asleep 30 minutes after her last bite.New Zealand is divided into two islands, North and South. We are about midway through North Island and have about 4 more days before we head to South Island, where ice glaciers and penguins await!
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