Hobbiton (Waikato) Matamata, North Island, New Zealand
By by Mrs Quinella, maintained by Cats and Dragons on 20-Oct-08. Waypoint GC1HCXK

Diesen Cache habe ich als Teil des Teams LaMaLaMa (jetzt: Mr_Lama) gefunden.
Da sich das Team leider getrennt hat, logge ich nun unter meinem neuen Account Lærry nach.

Ich hoffe auf Euer Verständnis und danke Euch für’s Verstecken der vielen tollen Dosen!
Selbstverständlich werde ich jedem Cache einen Favo hinterlassen, bei dem es der ursprüngliche Account auch getan hatte. Falls ich einen Cache vergesse, dürft ihr mich gerne anschreiben.

Ich wünsche Euch viele tolle Caches und sage zum Abschluss: Bis bald im Wald!
Liebe Grüße von Lærry

---

I found this cache as a member of the team LaMaLaMa (now: Mr_Lama).
Since the team unfortunately split up, I am re-logging with my new account Lærry.

I hope you will understand.
Furthermore I thank you for hiding the many great caches!
Of course I will leave a favo to each cache where the original account did it. If I forget a cache, you are welcome to write to me.

Best wishes, Lærry

As there's been no cache to find for months, I'm archiving it to keep it from continually showing up in search lists, and to prevent it from blocking other cache placements. If you wish to repair/replace the cache sometime in the future, just contact us (by email), and assuming it meets the guidelines, we'll be happy to unarchive it.

Heading from Hobbiton film set HQ to an event in the hills above Whangamata, but just had to stop here. Such a shame this is currently disabled but brought Silver Gollum along for a visit. Thanks for the opportunity.

It seems this cache has again been removed......so....after 7 years, 620 finds, 42 Favorite votes, and Geocache of the week award feature.

And 4 different hide locations around the site, negotiating with site tenants suitable hide location, multiple replacements, it is no time to Disable, and soon after, to archive this cache.

Thanks for all the logs from the multitude of visitors to this spot.

Heard today from somebody that the personnel at the i-site have removed the container and that it is now kept by them in the office. We found it on the 4th of Dec and i have noticed a change in location logged on the 10th, and after that there were not a lot of finds.

Gave this one another go and still no luck! Maybe another day...

Coordinates changed from:
S 37° 48.554 E 175° 46.317

Coordinates changed to:
S 37° 48.559 E 175° 46.317

Distance from original: 30.6 feet or 9.3 meters.
slight adjustment after a recent visit to check the new hide out.

We also had a bit of a hunt resulting in a DNF - looking forward to checking out the new co-ords cheers.

Saw an area where I thought it should be but was not there.. Kept walking in circles until I eventually gave up...

After our tour we had to visit Matamata and the I-site Hobbiton house. We took some nice photos. I knew that the container was gone so I left a paper to log. Nice Location!
TFTC!

Found on a day trip to Rotorua with my cousin. She's an Aucklander, but I'm visiting from Australia TFTC!

Wow this required SUPREME STEALTH...

Of course, when visiting popular places, you should visit them when everyone else does.

Today is the local town fair and Christmas parade and the whole place was TEEMING with muggles!!!

Never mind, I tied my shoe at an appropriate time and made a quick grab sign and replace.

Grabbed a TB as well! Woohoo!

TFTC

Our first day caching, thanks.

Sneaky little hide and managed to slip it out before retiring to a handy seat to 'do the business'. tftc

Tftc!

Quick stop on a road trip to Rotorua. Such a cool building! Dropped a trackable. TFTC! From NZ

First cache in New Zealand, after I did the Hobbiton tour which I loved. Since I arrive in New Zealand is raining. I hope the sun comes out. TFTC greetings from Portugal

1 cache in NZ D TFTC
Greetings from Portugal

Easy find, hint was great.
Loved the building and interesting seeing how it was all a fake prop (fake weathered wood, painted on lichen, plastic thatch)

TFTC

Yey - found!

Today I was here for the Hobbiton Filmset Tour.
Because one of my Travelbugs had the goal to visit Matamata and Hobbiton, I looked for this cache.
...but my GPS guided me to different places and the hint confused me. So I searched 1 hour.
I was a bit desperate and asked some other geocachers for help.
After my Tour I found the cache directly!!

TFTC!

Greetings from Germany,
LaMaLaMa

Cool find TFTC

We flew over 20500 kilometers to get to New Zealand. [^] There in Queenstown we started our magnificent and unforgettable journey along the whole NZ. First we drove through south island and then the north island to Auckland. Altogether over 3000 kilometers by car and so many glorious and beautiful views, animals and plants we saw. [^] We fell in love with the country for life. Unfortunately we had only three weeks to spend for our holidays, but we really hope, we’ll be back.

After visiting Hobbiton (Shire), we came to Matamata to look for this cache in the same name. The place was nice, but we found this very soon though. Thanks for the cache and very many greetings from Finland.

Driven past this location numerous times, but never truly took the time to stop and admire the workmanship involved. Very impressive. Swarming with foot traffic today, however a moment to tie my shoelaces was all I needed. In and out. Really enjoyed the cache, and simple placement. A joy indeed. Thanks Quinella!

Found it with Team FIN [janahola, kapeka, laalaa & temyllyl]

We had fun with caching few weeks here in New Zealand. Lots of geocaches and many sort of them too. We saw awesome places, weather was pretty good all the time and people were friendly and polite. Caches were pretty similar like in our home country. Of course there were some exeptions. Nice and really scenary country!

Greetings from Finland

On a geoholiday road tripping to Christchurch MEGA and around beautiful New Zealand. Our four people group (temyllyl, laalaa, kapeka and myself) from Finland used group tag FIN to log the caches.



Today our trip continued from Tauranga to Hamilton. Of course with some caching on the way. We had lots of fun and saw many nice places and caches. Thanks for the cache!



Welcome to MEGA Finland in 5-7 august 2016!

17th day on our geo-roadtrip in New Zealand, and caching our way towards north. Logged using our group nickname FIN with janahola, laalaa and kapeka. After having a blast in South Island and in Christchurch Mega event, we had to start heading back home. Fortunately we still had few days left to spend in NZ while driving to Auckland. Postcards sent back to home!

FIN (laalaa, janahola, temyllyl, kapeka) holiday in New Zealand. We had fun.
Greetings from Finland.
Thanks for the cache.

Nice easy find. Found with Madmass

Found it with Lukefrog

So here I am in Matamata again, love this place. The trip down the kato leading me to a tangi home in Ngatira.
Tis cute here. Have never stopped in the hobbiton i-site for a jack. Most trips here has always been coffee & the toilet stop.
Cool place to hide, very discreet.Bit of a shame though, not enough room to hide a trackable & Australian defence coins.

Found this one on our way back to Auckland. Beautiful Hobbit house and this time with nearly no muggles around. A quick snatch with no witnesses......TFTC

HockeyHiker19 and I were on Day 19 of our Geocaching honeymoon in New Zealand. We traveled from Taupo to Auckland on this day picking up caches along the way.
HockeyHiker19 requested a detour for this cache. I wasn't sure why until we pulled up. The attention to detail is amazing. We followed the arrow and where greeted with an empty area. A short search later and I had made the find.

Greetings from West Sacramento, California! Papa EGTH and I are on the last full day of our nearly 3-week long caching honeymoon in New Zealand and today's route took us from Taupo to Auckland.

We left the Taupo area fairly late in the morning, so we didn't stop for many caches along the way to Auckland, but when I located this one on the GPSr, I knew we had to stop for it. Papa EGTH located it very quickly without any Muggles in sight. We popped inside and I found a t-shirt design that I really liked, but they didn't have it in my size. Bummer for me! Thanks!

This was my twenty third stop of the day which would end up being a 260km round trip from Tauranga to Matamata via Rotorua, Tirau, Okororie and other small towns. Got 29 caches, a photo to complete a virtual cache and two TB's.

A very very cool iSite centre. Found the cache quickly but had to wait out some tourists before being able to grab it.
Once the deed was done I went inside and bought a couple of T shirts.
Thanks quinella

Nearly passed this one up as my GZ was off a bit. thanks for the fun before the big tour! RocklinGerbs from Rocklin, California.

Yepee

Visiting from Tasmania, Australia. Spent the night in town after doing the hobbiton tour and grabbed this one as we were leaving this morning. I thought it was going to be a little tricky to find but fortunately I spotted the clever little hidey-hole on my approach to GZ. This must be one of the coolest info sites around. Very cute little building!
Took the banana and left a platypus. TFTC:D

Yeahhh, TFTC. On the way to te puke leaving Auckland. We will come back for hobbiton !

This was a fast find whilst waiting for the bus to the hobbits... TftC corona Germany

Good spot. Lots of people though and initially thought I was damaging the structure!

Tftc found on our way south

Tftgc

The muggles certainly test you
Just got it back as the cops drove past many thanks

Found - just as we were about to gove up our search! Gps was bouncing a bit under the trees. Eagle eyed boyfriend spotted it (to my relief!) Tftc, sadly our pen gave up on us but left a new world mini, bouncy ball & magnet as evidence of our visit.

Second attempt at this one

Found this on a return visit. It was in the hiding place I found on my first visit and it deffo wasn't there last year. Good to tick this one off at last. TFTC

Traveling from Rotorua to home. Found a break in weather to look for a cache. Very tidy cache

I found this much more quickly than I expected to and considering I was in the midst of a busy Sunday afternoon with many muggles around including lots of sports team I think I did well to spot it.

Quick little stop off. TFTC

Quick find thanks to Narissa17, TFTC

Visiting New Zealand and doing a bit of LOTR/The Hobbit sightseeing. After a lovely night staying in a hobbit hole at waitomo we travelled to matamata to visit hobbiton. Thought we might geocache on the way! TFTC

On our world tour we stopped on this beautiful place too and had time to find a cache.

Thanks and best regards from Europe, Austria, Salzburg
graC

We arrived last night after doing all the Caves at Waitomo and were booked on the 9.30am Movie Set Tour so we drove up to so we could scope out the location. On the way there we passed a Farm House which offered overnight parking for RV/Motorhome/Campers so we drove up and we got real lucky with this one as we only had to pay $15 for power and also got to park in their big garage. So we were undercover and out of this incessant rotten, over it RAIN!!!!! Does it ever stop? We also got lucky in the morning, as although it rained and rained and rained all night, the Rain Gods must have taken pity on us and it let up the whole time during our tour. However, no sooner we were back in our Big Motorhome, the heavens opened and down it came, with Lightening and Thunder. Poor buggers on the tours for the rest of the day. We decided to head off to Rotorua and decided to look up just one more cache before leaving and we were so glad we did, as this must be the best I-Site building in all of New Zealand. We found the cache easily and left an Eiffel Tower. Thanks for bringing us to this one. Now off to Rotorua. Oh and this one gets a Favourite Point from us just for the building

I think my gps had old coords and old hint. No next time for us, great time at Hobbiton.

...a beautiful country, I'll be back...

#3,618

I noticed that you could get picked up in Matamata for the Hobbiton tour, but as we didn't need to do that, I didn't look up any details of where you get picked up from. What a cool & unexpected building in the centre of a town!

We got lucky with our timing, as the next tour bus was leaving as we walked up. So no one was around to watch us search. Bikerbuddy thought he spotted the hiding place as we approached, and he was right!

Thanks

This was a side of Hobbiton we wouldn't have seen without this cache. We had been to the Hobbiton film set in the early afternoon, and we did the caches in Matamata as a diversion on our way back to Auckland before a late dinner. However, we had a hire car, so had no need to be picked up from this location to get to the farm. It was a surprise to see the building sitting in the middle of town, separate from the rest of Hobbiton. A nice surprise and an easy find. The bus for Hobbiton was just leaving as we got there, so we had the place to ourselves. Thanks

I have come to Hobbiton (Matamata) for a caravan rally and today is a free day so it was out and about picking up a few caches.

I was muggled twice here, one by an Australian woman and her family, who asked me if I was a Geocacher. She had just heard about Geocaching and thought it was a new activity until I enlightened her. The second was a woman and her grandson who were watching me like a hawk so I decided to approach them and explain what I was about. They thought it was a great thing to do.

Cheers for the cache.

Nice & tftc

Had to wait for a little old lady muggle to stop watching us before we could retrieve this one. Amazing building. TFTC

FOUND after we finish the Hobbiton tour.
Nice hint! We replaced the cache with some goods when no muggles are around, then camouflaged it better so it can't be seen from in the distance.
TftC!

Coordinates changed from:
S 37° 48.570 E 175° 46.319

Coordinates changed to:
S 37° 48.554 E 175° 46.317

Distance from original: 97.9 feet or 29.8 meters.
cache replaced /co-ords and hint updated

up and running again thanks to Cats and Dragons for maintaining.

Was with CatsandDragons when he needed to maintain this one. Helped suss out a new hiding spot and signed the log while we got coords. A great place for a cache, I had tried once before but it was missing so glad to knock this one off. Thanks for the cache.

seems to be missing..will investigate replacement

Too bad, couldn't find it as well, even with more hints from pre-finders. So either it's been muggled or too well hidden...

Had a good look but crazy amount of people around so gave up after 20 mins. Great building.

Incredibly sad not to find this one after a tour of Hobbiton. Spent ages looking around the building and surrounding area with a friend visiting from America. Was just too cold outside though so we had to leave.

Really wanted to find this one but it wasn't to be. It's a shame the clue isn't a bit more concise with the amount of muggles around as we were beginning to draw attention to ourselves

Walked around in circles for quite some time before going back to something I had already looked at.
TFTC

Wow what a cool little hide first find for one of the doods in the crew and got some cool stuff from the shop

Wow what a day #74 caches in the end, Stating at 6.30am when TNXPro picked me up in Tauranga. We where heading to the event Paeroa to do the HRT Rail trail down to Te-Aroha. We decided to leave early and clear the Matamata caches on everything on the way. Had an awesome trip then after the ride did the Golden Cross Series, the caches around the Martha Mine and to finish of the day a night right down Waihi Beach to Bowentown clearing the new series down there, even a couple of FTF's in the mix. Thank you to all the cache owners as I might be using copy and paste a bit with logging 74 caches. Really enjoyed the day and what a mission time for some well needed rest.

This was a must do cache while in Matamata, We where looking around for quite a bit when a lady that worked there turned up to open and seemed quite worried what we where up to. Thought it was best to just straight out saying we where looking for a Geocache and how it was voted a Cache of the week. She said they had asked the owner to remove it a few years ago. knowing there had been recent finds we could have a silent chuckle at this comment and luckily some tourists took here attraction away from us by asking one of the funniest things I had heard, in a thick accent "Excuses me are we in the Shire".

Was very chuffed that my eyes spotted this one in the end, what a clever little cache very well hidden.

#7 today. This was a day that turned out to be a very long day caching with kiwimikebop - 74 caches in total.
This was my first visit to Matamata and this was a must do cache at this amazing building.
We were muggled by a lady who worked in the building and we told here that we were geocaching. She said that the geocache was removed years ago when they renovated the building and it was gone. We checked and saw there were recent logs, so when she became distracted by some tourists, we went to work searching for it.
Mike found the cache, which was so cleverly hidden, it could have taken a very long time to find.
Thanks for bringing me here.
TFTC

We stopped for elevenses in Matamata on the way from Taupo to Auckland. The cache was quickly found, and we were lucky not to have too many muggles around. I love stopping at this spot each time I pass through town. TFTC.

Well hidden was going to be very disappointed if there wasn't a cache round here somewhere.

Couldn't resist caching in Hobbiton. TFTC

no such luck, gutted really wanted to find this one

Waaah! Greedy little fat hobbitses has stolen my preciouss!! Bagginses will pay for thiss!

(Looked 3x in 24 hours with plenty of muggle free searching but no joy for uss!!)

Magic. It take little time to search, because of several muggles!

No sign of the cache we found 2 geocaching logs right out in the open though!

Hmmm found a geocaching log right where the cache was meant to me. Has it been muggled we think so. So sad this was the one we really wanted to find.

Cute geocache, and relatively easy to find.

Fairly quick find but be careful with the greens! TFTC!

Found on the way to the movie set!

Nice hide tftc

It took a while, but at least we succeded
TFTC and greetings from germany

Dad found almost drove me nuts

I guess you cannot visit Matamata without stopping here. Took a bit of looking. A very pleased Scotty finally located the cache. Next time we are here we will need to find time to visit the movie set. TFTC

Hello from Canada! Took a few tries to get this one. High traffic area, and yesterday backpackers set up a BBQ near by. This morning the cyclone rain helped keep the area clear. Was driving us nuts not finding it. Tftc! Do the tour and the feast if you can!

After visiting the wonderful movie set I wanted to find another cache! We had to look out for this a longer while, but the we were lucky !! Well hidden, pretty cool cache!!
Thank you for hiding and greetings from Germany!

Very excited to find this cool little cache after our visit to the film set (which was pretty amazing as well!)
Many thanks for placing this cache - we are life long LOTR and Hobbit fans, so obvioiusly this will always be a favourite.
We are from England, and having a road trip around New Zealand as part of a 9 month long round the world trip to celebrate our 60th birthdays.

Too much muggles

I can see why this one has so many favourite points, such a great cache in a great spot. Took me a good while to find it and even then it was a bit of an accident. Pretty great cache for my last find in New Zealand. TFTC!

This entry was edited by Zherff on Thursday, 05 March 2015 at 07:09:35 UTC.

We've made a good start on our trip to Papamoa by collecting the cache at Hobbiton at 8am, with no one around, so we had to try this yet again, to cover up that green patch in the middle of a crowd of smilie faces on our map.

No one around and we made a quick find this time. It wasn't what we were expecting at all, but apt. Has it changed over the years? It has been missing other times we have tried.

Used the nearby conveniences and was surprised at the sign 'Do not wash fruit in the hand basins'. Why would you- or why shouldn't you? What happens if you do? Where should you do it?

Must add a favourite to this internationally famous cache. Reading some of the logs makes you feel privileged to live in NZ, this magic distant destination for so many.

Found

Awesome! Best place I've ever found a geocache.

Found with my last account

I think I only took one photo in Matamata, it's a cool building eh! And we have here a very cool hide as well. Thanks!!!