Taking the plunge in Taupo
Trip Start
Jun 14, 2008
1
45
93
Trip End
Jun 20, 2009
Taupo,
North Island,
New Zealand
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
This is a cool little town in the middle of the north island where you can partake in lots of activities and sample the local hostileries. We met up with Trev and Neas here for the weekend and booked ourselfs a cool little house avec BBQ and garden.
Myself and Murph arrived first and picked up the keys in a shop in town. When we got to the house we realised that there was a number of other houses with the same address, only diference being an A,B,C or D . You can imagine my embarresment when we chose the wrong one and I walked into the living room of a clearly shocked family. After explaining myself and offering my advise that they should change their locks we slunk out and located our actual abode.
Trev and Neas arrived from Auckland not too much later and we hit the tiles
our rental apartment
. After a few beers we went to a gorgeous Thai restaurant called Thai Classic where one meal after the next was brilliant ( a defo for anyone who enjoys good Thai food ). Discretion being the better part of valour, we decided upon an earlyish night and headed back to the gaff after. of course at home we did manage to get stuck into several night-caps and were suitably hung-over in the morning.
Alas, there is no better way to expel a nasty hang-over than to plunge 150 feet into a gorge tied to your beautiful if terror stricken girlfriend. And that is exactly what myself and Mighty Murph did first thing. We had a voucher for a cheap jump before 11 so it was all hands on deck and down the road to the ravine before anyone had a chance to say jimini jillikers no-WAYYYYY. We had both done a bunji before so we decided on originality by doing a tandem one this time. It actually made the experience a lot more fun and a lot less scary. We were joined together as you can see in the video and had to raise our free arm aloft and drop after 3. If you look at the photos though you can see that Murph has a last second change of heart and drops her arm as we lean over the edge. We fell to the river below and actually plunged into the cold water. It was an amazing experience and we were buzzing for the day after it.
drinking towers...
We went for a spin after in the guys rented car taking in amazing waterfalls and beautiful scenery before settling down to some wine-tasting and a beautiful lunch.
Back home we got the BBQ stoked up while the sun was out and then we went into town for cupla scoops. We had great craic in one of the pubs where we met a group of local lads from a rugby team. When we asked them did they know the haka they were only to glad to rustle up the rest of their team, whip of their shirts and gave us an impromtu rendition. They were a great bunch of young fellas and we had many a rendition of Ireland's call and much chat about the upcoming All Blacks game. After a few towers of beer too many we were fit for our respective leabas and headed home after having a great day.
Next day before the guys left for Auckland and we caught our bus for Rotaurua we came accross a scheme that will enable us to make our millions when we get back home to Ireland thus funding our aspired future of living half in New Zealand and half back home. On the lake front some genius had set up a hole-in-one golf competition. All the striving Tiger Woods had to do was get one of the balls into the hole floating on a little mettle island not far off land
some locals do the haka for us!
. Myself and equally gullable Trev could sense this was our day, it was in the air. We bought a bucket of balls ( at a dollar a ball no less ), chose our irons carefully and teed off to victory. Needless to say we did not come away with the 5grand prize money but an enlightened observation into how to make a quick buck. The owner told us he would go through 3000 balls a day and hires a couple of young lads to snorkel about gathering them up for him to cajole the next day's suckers out of their sponds. Watch out the lakes of Killarney, here we come.On the way to our bus, myself and Murph ran into an old acquaintance we didnt think we would see again, and certaintly not on the north island but there he was, our camper van itself. We were very tempted to hang around to meet the new owners and exchange stories but we had a bus to catch with the possibility of catching the Canada v. Ireland rugby match in Rotaurua when we got there.
