Taupo still
Trip Start
Jul 12, 2006
1
98
230
Trip End
Jun 18, 2007
Taupo,
New Zealand
Thursday, November 9, 2006
We had brekkie then drove to Huka Falls. They're actually more like rapids really. They're formed by the lake water being pushed down a narrow and deep channel, creating such force that the water literally lashes down the channel. It's very cool to watch. We read that two people tried to canoe down the rapids, one made it and one died, which isn't surprising really because the pull of the water is huge at the end, with all that water plunging into a deep pool, if you got caught in that you'd go under and never come back up (as the poor canoeist found out). We walked a bit up the river to see the whole length of them. The water is controlled by the hydropower station and is at its most fierce during the day when most electricity is needed. We then headed to craters of the moon, which is a thermal area covered in mud pools and steam vents. It was definitely worth the $5 to stroll along the walkways for a couple of hours but there wasn't enough water in them to see any real action. This is due to the power station lowering the water levels too much.
Huka prawn farm was our next stop, but it was closed. It's the worlds only heated geothermal freshwater prawn farm. It looked quite cool, as did the killer prawn golf outside. We stopped at Honey Hive, which is a place that has a huge bee hive in the shop, you can see how the hives work, how they're made and how bees make honey. It's a great attraction as it's free. They connect the hives via big see-through tubes that go in and out the shop, the sound of the bees is weird, it really is a spectacle. I bought some nice honey, two different types and bought some manuka honey moisturizer for a fraction of the price of the posh stuff in the pharmacy.
Great Britian played the All Blacks tonight, so we went into town, to the local Irish pub to watch the game. It was awful, GB got trashed, literally. 34 - 4 I think the final score was. Not the best place to watch the Kiwi's trounce GB. Rotaroa is like Blackpool, it was full of Kiwi stag do's. We headed back to the hostel to drink some more beer intending to come back out but we got stuck into our darts again so stayed playing that with a few other people.
We'd been hoping to do the Tongarario Crossing but the track still isn't open, it's been closed since Thursday due to bad weather, we haven't yet seen the top of Mt Ruaphau yet because of the weather. The skydive people said yesterday that the weather has been really bad over the last week, all of the mountains were clear of snow but the day we arrived they'd been freshly topped with a new batch of snow and it was continuing. So no go for Tongarario, which is a real bummer.
