"Ok Fine, Let's Be Tourists"

August 24th - 26th

TAUPO AND ROTORUA

After Scott finished all his assignments that were due during his two week break, we drove the 150km to the city of Taupo. Since we left earlier than we are used to on our weekend trips, we were excited to have more daylight on our first day than we are used to. Instead of just trying to get to our location before dark, we were able to stop and see some things along the way, and still have daylight to spare.

We stopped at Orakei Korako Cave and Thermal Park, also known as The Hidden Valley, which is along the Waikato River at Lake Ohakuri and is apparently one of the biggest geothermal areas with the greatest number of active geysers in New Zealand. After a short boat ride across the lake, we walked along the boardwalk through the thermal area.

             Orakei Korako Thermal Park

We walked through the area exploring the many steaming geysers, boiling hotsprings, hot water algae covered silica, boiling mud pools, and the sulfury smells.

You can't tell from the picture, but this was as if it were simmering away on a stove top.

Geysers spurting smelly gas.

                                              Algae, beautiful smelly algae.

Bubbling mud spa. Smelly mud spa.

Probably hotter than Africa.










There was also a 120ft cave down to a hotpool. At the mouth of the cave, we read signs warning not to climb past the fence into the cave. The fence was not very good at restraining us, and we easily made our way into the cave. Obviously we weren't the only ones that could not resist because there was a well trotted path down into it.

After spending a couple hours here, we continued on to Taupo, which is a town on Lake Taupo. Taupo is one of the most touristy towns on New Zealand's North Island.

Craving a nice soak in a hotspring, we found out about Taupo's Hot Water Beach.

It ended up being a tiny little pool set in the rocks on the shore of Lake Taupo. We were there, so we thought it'd be nice to dip our feet in.

In most places we've been before we have felt like we could see the place without feeling like picture-snapping tourists (even though I love taking lots of photos), but here it seemed to be unavoidable. The buses loaded with Asian tourists was our first hint. So... fine, we admit that we were tourists this trip.

There is a road called Huka Falls Road that we decided to check out mainly because the free campground was up there, and also to see what is attracting all the tourists.

First Stop: Huka Falls

This is an area of the Waikato River where it narrows from about 100m wide to only 15m. This results in the water flowing at a volume of 220,000 litres per second as it reaches the 10m high cliff creating Huka Falls.

Huka Falls

Next Stop: Huka Lodge

This seems to be the New Zealand version of the Banff Springs Hotel. We looked into treating ourselves to a night off from sleeping in Bertie, but quickly changed our minds when we learned a standard room goes for about $1500/night. Plus, we couldn't do that to Bertie.

Next Stop: Huka Honey Hive

We couldn't resist some more free honey sampling. This time we had a honey and fig ice cream cone and found some really nice honey hand cream.

Next Stop: Huka Prawn Park

This is a man-made prawn farm where they produce about 32 tones of prawns per year. They use the waste from the geothermal power station to heat water from the Waikato River to 20 degrees which is ideal for prawn breeding.

Last Stop: A Natural Hotspring

Hotpools next to the Waikato River

This is what we were craving. A soak in a natural hotspring. All you had to do is walk down to the river bank and from the top of the hill to underneath the bridge are a few hotpools ranging in temperature. We started off at the top by the waterfall, but only spent a few minutes here because it was too hot. Then we made our way down closer to the river where it was the perfect temperature and sat on the rough rocky bottom but enjoying the natural surroundings.

We dried off and made our way back into town. We made some dinner down by the lake. It was so windy and cold that it was the first time we dished up our dinner and jumped in Bertie to eat. We found out that not there is not much going on in town on a weekday night in winter, but found a movie theater and decided to go see a movie called Incendies. It was the smallest theater we've been in, with probably a 100 inch screen and only 10 seats. After the movie we drove back up Huka Falls Road where there is a free campsite.

I am 35 years old. I am divorced. And I live in a van down by the river.

In the morning we woke up and were bombarded by ducks!

Of course we fed them some bread. I think they were used to being fed.

All gone.

Along with all the above tourist attractions Taupo has, it also attracts tourists for its adrenaline-inducing activities, like skydiving, bungee jumping, and even tandem pendulum swinging.

We asked the guys not to do a countdown drop, but to just surprise us. There we were swaying over the Waikato River hanging from a thread and then dropped. With the tandem swing you get going faster than you would alone. They told us we were going about 85km/hr. Thanks to the video, we don't have to try to describe Nikki's screaming... you can hear it for yourself. SO FUN!

Adrenaline still pumping, we left Taupo and drove about 80km to Rotorua. It was one of the straighter roads in New Zealand, only taking us about an hour to drive. We stopped in at the i-site and booked our tickets for our evening entertainment and found out where to camp for the night.

We drove up to Lake Okareka, about 10km outside of Roturua, to check out the camping situation. We found a beautiful area right on the lake that allows freedom camping (but only until the Rugby World Cup starts, then they are going to start charging to camp there).

 

It was early afternoon and we were pretty tired when we came down from the adrenaline rush, so we chilled out by the lake for the afternoon...

Fed more ducks.....

And played in the playground.

This took us to the evening entertainment mentioned earlier. We went to a place called Te Puia, a Maori cultural center for an Indigenous Evening Experience. Again, we realized how touristy this was when we saw the crowds of Asians piling out of the buses. But we didn't want to miss out on this cultural aspect of New Zealand and heard that this was the place to do it.

It started out at 4pm with a guided tour through the center in a small group. We went to the National Carving School, where we watched one of the students working away at a wood carving and saw some of their amazing work.

A piece of wood estimated to be about 5000 years old.

We also went to their National Weaving School, where we saw a demonstration on how they make rope from a piece of flax and all the clothing and art they create with weaving.

Our tour guide who called us "my loves" all the time.

 

Then we went to the Kiwi House, where they have two Kiwi birds, an endangered species, under their protective care.



We got a tour through another geothermal area with more hotpools, geysers, and mud pools.

It is hard to tell from the picture but the geyser behind us is erupting, spurting water 10m into the air.



The evening continued with stories of Maori gods and warriors at Te Keketanga-a-Rangi, a space surrounded by twelve monumental carvings, each representing a Maori warrior.

Then we were led to the marae (a Maori sacred meeting place) where we were greeted with an authentic Maori greeting, warrior challenge and a Maori concert.

The girls got to learn the traditional Poi dance, which involved swinging a tethered ball around and swaying your hips.

The guys learned the Haka, a dance usually performed by warriors before battle to intimidate their opponents. (If you follow rugby at all, you've probably seen the All Blacks do this before their games).

The next part we were most looking forward to was the Hangi Feast, which is a meal that is cooked using the traditional Maori method of cooking in a pit in the ground.

 The meal started off with a buffet of seafood, soup, and salads. Then we were served the hangi food, which was a spread of chicken, pork, lamb, potato, pumpkin, sweet potato, and sweet corn.

And ended with a buffet of desserts. This was our first time trying the traditional New Zealand dessert Pavlova.

We were then taken back out to the geothermal area where we watched the lit-up geysers erupting and enjoyed a cup of hot chocolate.

We know that the whole thing was a little put-on, and cheesy, and touristy, but it was actually a lot of fun and the food was great. It was really the only way we were going to see such a performance and eat food like that during our time here, and it was worth going to.

At the end of the night we headed back to our earlier scoped out campsite up by the lake where we crashed for the night. In the morning, we were not surprised to find ourselves surrounded by ducks again, but this time the swans decided to join.

We had to head back to Hamilton fairly early that day because we needed to get home in time to do some laundry and get packed for our next trip which we were leaving on the very next day.

Early morning flute playing