Craters of the moon
Trip Start
Mar 25, 2008
1
18
28
Trip End
Apr 22, 2008
Taupo,
New Zealand
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
We started our tour at the Craters of the Moon, which is a volcanic active area and well, looks like the craters of the moon. You wouldn' t expect there to be soo much activity, becuase as always in NZ nature hits you by surprise. To enter this area you had to pay 5 NZ$, which is really cheap, most of the times you don' t have to pay entry to the national parks... just donations! Nice them kiwis! :-) So, we were entering this park and you can go around on wooden bars along the craters. All you can see at first is smoke coming up from holes in the ground, looks more like someone lit a small fire. Coming closer you can see the little craters and smell the sulfur. You can feel the earth is boiling underneath, it' s really hot. That's why you cannot walk on sole ground, because you feet would get burned badly. There was one amazing crater which was called the mud crater. It was really big and you could up and see into it, it was all mud on the ground and it was like bubbling and boiling. Looked more like boiling water in a big bowl, except it was brown mud. Spooky. Smoke everywhere! They also make swoooshing sounds! It felt like walking through Jurassic Park there. Pretty impressive!
Then we went on to the Huka Falls, they are providind the area around Taupo with electricity, so we thought, they must be pretty huge waterfalls there. Nope, weren't! They were not soo big, but pretty impressive. The water is crystal clear and turquoise ... as all the water around here is. You just want to jump in and take a few swims there! Too cold though!
After that we went to the Bungy Jump. Watched a few jumpers. Scenic bridge there, but wouldn' t get me jumping. We were thinking of doing the sky dive over Taupo... we even went to the local ariport to check it out. But ... aahh, yeah we chickened out! :-( Not really my thing. It was really busy and they squeezed like 10 people plus tandem partners in the small, tiny, scary looking plane! ahh noo! Maybe if there would have been somebody to talk us really into it, we' d go for it but since none of us really really wanted to do it... the idea of it sounded great though.
