Taupo Urban Retreat

During the whole drive from Rotorua to Taupo it would intermitenly downpour. All I could think of was the fact that I had finally gotten enough guts to sign myself up for skydiving, and this was one opporunity I did NOT want to pass up, or get ruined from the weather. Our driver Natalie who was very cool kept calling Skydive Taupo every hour or so to see if we would be able to jump or not. They told her there would be a chance that we might get to go. Great :( As we kept driving from Rotorua ...

On the way through to Taupo, we stopped at Rotarua where some people went kayaking. The town is full of steaming vents from the volcanic activity below the surface. I visited Whakarewarewa, a living Maori village where they cook using the steam from the volcanic vents, and bathe in the waters from the hot pools. One of these hot pools is 90C, and they use this water cooled down over the day to bathe. Another pool is 190C! This is only used to kill game. They also have views over two geysers w...

We left Uncle Boys and made our way to the Kaituna River, where we were going to do our white water rafting, including rafting the 7m Tutea Falls, the largest commercially rafted waterfall in the world. We did this with the company Raft It Kaitiaki Adventures, who we would thoroughly recommend. Some Maori prayers were said before we got into the rafts, and also before we went down the waterfall. We learnt the significance of the Silver Fern (the leaf on the All Blacks rugby shirts), and I was...

Got up early and decided to check out the mountain biking in Rotorua as it was home of the World champs this year and the bus didn't leave until lunch. The hostel wanted $35 for 2 hours which was a joke so 2 doors down I found a better deal and also a partner, a Canadian girl from another backpacker bus who was looking for someone to go with. We cycled along a path alongside the sulphur pools and to the Whakarewarwa state forest park (Redwoods) and had some fun on the easy trails, but I would...

Day 198 - Got woken up by Unkle Boy to the sound of ABBA blasting through the hall - what a great way to wake up - I felt like dancing to the bathroom to brush my teeth! After breakfast I took the opportunity to take a walk along the river to the beach, where I saw a number of locals fishing for whitebait (a NZ speciality). So we set off to Rotorua, which is a hotbed of thermal activity (and therefore very smelly) and had an hour or so in the town. Had a walk around the park, which was full o...

There's two things you should know about Lake Taupo. First, the entire lake is basically a huge volcanic crater (the size of Greater London) created during a monstrous eruption some 27,000 years ago. When this baby blew up day turned to night as far away as China. This, along with a gale force wind and a swell to rival the Pacific, gave us food for thought as we sailed out in our replica 1920s launch. The second thing to know about Lake Taupo is that it bit Ally something wicked. No sooner di...

19th Jan 2008 This morning I did a self walking tour around Rotorua visiting the museum and government gardens, there were even people playing croquet! in the gardens. I then walked down and along the lake front visiting the Tamatekapua meeting house and the St Faith's Anglican Church which combine the Anglican and Maori traditions before heading back along Kuirau park with thermal springs and the smell of sulphur! Got picked up by the Stray bus at 1pm and headed off to Taupo for the night st...

I was gettin a bit concerned - there are supposedly 63 million sheep in new zealand and so far up until today I had only seen about 100! Seen plenty of cows but today we saw loads of sheep and as its spring here there are loads of lambs too which are pretty cute. We left Taupo this morning - didn't really think that Taupo was that great. Its supposed to be the adventure capital of the north but other than skydiving there wasn't much advertised. I so regret no doing the skydiving though - we w...

Drove into Rotorua in the morning but decided not to do any of the trips from here. Morrie told us the story of how MacDonalds are paid someone to set up the 1st franchice in NZ (opposite to normal where you have to pay them). As some people had decided to do some trips the rest of us had a couple of hours to kill. Wandered into the Geothermal Park in town to look at the various steaming water / mud pools. Also had to book the Wellington to Picton ferry, which was a bit of a struggle for some...