Rangimarie Bed and Breakfast Taupo

i left the cold wet village of national park and drove to lake taupo with Anya who i went on the walk with the day before. it rained for the whole journey and we couldnt see much not even the lake really and we drove along its shore for most of the journey. we checked into the hostel and then went to huka falls, the waterfall with the biggest volume of water in NZ. we then went to ...

... then headed for the water front and walked towards the habour. On the way we saw a seaplane take off, many boats heading out onto the lake and a crazy golfing challenge! The challenge was to try and get a hole in one onto a 'green' about 25 meters out into the lake! Didnt see anyone complete the challenge thou!

After a walk round and some lunch we headed up to Huka Falls. Falls ...

... a nice soft standing.

On the ground Mike and I embrace and we hang out waiting for the
others. After viewing the pictures – (Mike's came out, mine didn't)
and DVD (these guys are fast) we head off to get some food to
celebrate being alive and to quiet are stomachs. The stop:
BurgerFuel. Burgers and kumara fries (kumara is basically a sweet
potato) yummm. Now we're about to drive to Wellington – still in
awe of our morning!

Our first night on the north island was spent at lower hutt which is near wellington. We went straight to the spa as soon as we arrived. The following day we went to te papa museum in wellington. after this we headed to levin.
On the 20th of june we headed to the tongariro national park. we stayed the night at a doc campsite which was not a very good idea as it is halfway up a mountain ...

... turbulent turquoise torrent throwing itself under the viewing platforms. Taupo itself has a friendlier feel than Rotorua - it's very much a tourist town attracting both Kiwi and overseas visitors thanks to efforts of the locals in recent years to boost it's appeal. Alas for us, much like Paihia was, it's beauty is somewhat lost in the overcast weather which was to hang around until our departure. The early promise of morning sunshine as we woke ...

Meine erste Station war Thames, mit der größte Ort auf der Coromandel Halbinsel. Groß ist in Neuseeland sehr relativ, denn hier gibt's nur 10000 Einwohner. Es gibt eine Mainstreet mit rechts und links Holzhütten und kleinen Geschäften. Man kommt sich oft vor wie in kleinen Westernstädten. Ich hab an einem Tag den Mount Pinnacles bestiegen, was laut Information 8 Std. dauern sollte. Nach 4 Std. war ich wieder zurück, was aber auch an der gnadenlos ...

... turns out to be a bit of a party hostel though it has decent facilities my dorm room doesn't have any windows. I am not impressed so I head round the corner to book into another hostel for the next couple of nights. I take a short stroll by the lake before dinner and bump into Shelley who I first met briefly at Little Earth Lodge a week or so before. We are both hugely surprised and spend the evening catching up. Definitely a bonus of this kind of travelling.

This was a rest day in the lovely lake side town of Taupo. We wondered into town with a 'to do' list and after a problem with the bank telling Hannah she had no money, which was a lie due to bad admin, we thought about going kayaking and decided we could but didn't want to, we were to tied to appreciate it. We got new maps, switching from AA ones to Kiwi map ones which for me is exciting because I'm a map geek! In the ...

... means four hours of driving for three hours of cave time. in the van, it was us and a bunch of Japanese tourists. About a half hour into the drive, our teeny tiny shuttle driver Kate stops in the middle of nowhere, literally, and picks up a bunch of tourists transferring from another bus. It was pretty funny seeing all these tourists scampering across the highway to get from one to the other. The caves were cool -- we had signed up for the three cave package so we could ...

... a walk down to the bottom of a waterfall within the grounds of the buried village and climbed back to the museum before heading off towards Taupo. One further stop on the way to Taupo, at the Wai-a-Tapu thermal whatsits (can't you tell its a while since we were there). Basically this is park which has just about every sulphurous (yes Americans not sulfurus, like thats a word) and ...