The Huka Lodge Taupo

... really cold today so found Macdonalds for a coffee and to de-ice. On the way back to the car we stopped off at coin save which is like pound world. Jon bought a hat and I bought some thick socks for around $5 total.We headed to the i-site to find out what there is to do in Taupo, plenty when the sun is shining but nothing to do when it is raining unless we wanted to go swimming which we didnt. We decided to go and find a camp site we saw in ...

... I didn't have time to enjoy the scenery as it was motorway driving for a long way. I intended doing a couple of hours and finding a place to stay at Levin. The traffic all drives at a steady 100km per hour and seemed to flow very well, I have heard NZ has a lot of road accidents but as in Christchurch during rush hour travelling they do seem quite well behaved!! This I duly did and it was dark by the time I arrived in Levin. I had had the forethought however ...

... that were brilliant fun and it was well worth doing. We also visited the Huka Falls in the jet boat which were pretty spectacular, especially when you get down to water level like we were. It was brill :-) So, after the excitement of the morning we just headed back into the town for some shopping. We got me some new sunglasses as my previous pair had lost a limb (sad, sad day...) and we also got me a pair of Jandals! For those that don't know what these were ...

... was really eerie with it being a cloudy day We then went off to see Mt taranaki before heading off to do the tongariro crossing, it absolutley ****** it down for one day, i havent seen rain like that before. It held us up for two days, but it was worth the wait. To see the volcanoes with sun rising over it was cool, to then walk amongst them and through the craters you could picture the kind of eruptuions occured. The south creater ...

Taupo lies by Lake Taupo, which is the biggest lake in NZ ( and according to my German skydiving tandem, the biggest in the southern hemisphere. Although he told me this during my fall down from the aircraft, I had time to have some doubts...) Here I hiked the famous Tongariro crossing, NZ's best day hike they say. It is 20+ km long and had some magnificent sights of two volcanoes, mountain cones in the distance, green NZ grass, blue-green mountain lakes and ...

... en blijkbaar een van de goedkoopste plekken in NZ om uit een vliegtuig te springen. We zitten echter nogal op een krap budget momenteel dus gaan we nog wat afwachten. No me apetece escribir, en realidad ya tenemos la proxima granja y hemos pasado por taupo porque parece que es bastante bonito, y porque es el sitio mas barato del mundo ...

... and booked onto Tamaki Maori village tour. We checked into our room then got onto a bus destined for the Maori village. on the bus the maori driver asked for a male to nominate himself chief. Sam stepped up to the challange and his first job was to chant Tia Una as everyone else grabbed their ores and began to row up to the village. Sams second challenge as Chief was to recieve a war dance from the village warriors. They did this challange to see if we ...

... with a combination of blinking, water and eye drops we managed to enable her to get to sleep.

We went to sleep hoping for better weather tomorrow, as we hope to get out and do some activities on the Lake itself, maybe some kayaking or something like that...


Lots of love,


Al & Katie xx