Home to Lake Taupo

Saturday 11 February 2017 - 

With the impending heatwave due to hit southeast Queensland today, providing temperatures around the 40 degree mark, we happily backed our bags, jumped on a plane at Coolangatta and headed to New Zealand for six gloriously cool weeks in the north island. The flight was good and so was the 23 degree temperature in Auckland when we arrived. 

Hertz gave us a car, because we gave them access to our credit card, and away we went down south towards Lake Taupo. The drive was both uneventful and unremarkable as we travelled good roads through farmlands and small towns.  We shopped in Taupo before we pulled into the driveway of our AirBnB accommodation on the shores of Lake Taupo around 7:50 pm local time. 

View from front verandah over Lake Taupo

The place is a renovated old fishing shack with views over the lake out front. With three bedrooms it is very roomy for just the two of us. The owners live in a big place behind the shack and are lovely. They welcomed us, showed us around and the next morning the husband Ross flew to America for a four week skiing holiday with three of his mates - a tradition he has done every year since 1972! His wife, Christine, is happily staying at home to care for the beautiful gardens and guests (that's us).

Sunday 12 February - Up early at 8 am, which is 5 am back home, we set off south along the shores of Lake Taupo to the town of Turangi on the southern end of the lake. The local tourist information station helped us out with local maps and things to do in the area. Armed with lots of paper and no knowledge of what to do first, we kicked off our six week trip with a lookout and river walk along the Tongarino River Trail.

Tongarino River Trail

Man in rubber pants

Man without rubber pants

Being Sunday and the weather sunny the river is dotted with trout fishermen - if they are not fishermen then they are strange single men in rubber pants standing thigh deep in cold water with a long pole. All hoping for catch of the elusive fish. We did see a trout caught and then released by one of the rubber clad men.

Lunch was held in a very nice rock n' roll cafe that had great music playing and board games on each table. I taught Julie to play draughts and once again I proved to be a great teacher as she beat me!

After lunch we did the scenic volcanic loop drive around Tongariro National Park where there are some active volcanoes.

A mountain

A waterfall

A ski field - it is there

A nice photo by Julie

Low cloud stopped us from seeing too much of the high stuff but the scenery was spectacular. A walk to a waterfall then a drive to the ski fields rounded out a great first day.

A lookout over Lake Taupo

Monday 13 February - the weather has turned windy and showery - but still nice and cool. What to do today ... We hung around our accommodation for the morning and after much research Julie decided I would like Indian for lunch. "Oh no" I thought and "Oh boy" I said. As it turned out the meal was lovely - low expectations obviously increases your enjoyment.

Next, with the ultimate goal of circumnavigating Lake Taupo at some point, we headed west into a national park to see the Buried Forest - a forest that has been buried. A bit of history is needed here ..... in the second century AD the Taupo volcano blows its top. It was the largest volcanic eruption on earth in the last 70000 years. The red dust sunsets caused by the blast are written about at the time by both the Romans and Chinese. The explosion blew out at 600 - 900 klm per hour destroying everything around it. Massive layers of ash and pumice then covered the landscape for 60-80 klm around the vent. The local forests were flattened and buried. The Buried Forest is one of those forests buried nearly 2000 years ago. 

So down a muddy bush track we drove by ourselves. The drizzling rain didn't help. At the end of the track we parked in a turning circle and followed the sign along a cleared path and there they were, a couple of dead trees lying in the mud.

Excitedly walking to see dead tree trunks

Hiding my Exposed Area - I need rubber pants

Trees of the Buried Forest

2000 year old tree in the Buried Forest

Could have been any other fallen dead trees except for the fact that they had all fallen the same way.

So with the rain coming down even harder we set off for home and after about 1.5 hours we arrived with Lake Taupo circumnavigated and shopping bags in hand. With more rain forecast we settled in for a cosy night inside.






























Next day was again overcast and showery and quite cool at around 14 degrees. Once again the the morning was not conducive towards much outdoor activity so I spent this time hiding away all Indian menus so I felt reasonably confident about lunch today.  The showery weather has been quite good for us given the busy 4-6 weeks we have just had with moving house. Good to recharge the batteries.

The afternoon was a little brighter so we headed just south of Lake Taupo to do the Rotopounamu Crater Walk. The lake is the crater of a blast volcano now filled with water. Arriving late (ish) at around 3:30 pm worked well for us as everyone was coming out as we were starting the walk. The sun sets after 8pm so the two hour walk was a good length.

The thick, dark rainforest walking track

Striding into the thick rainforest and saying goodbye to the last of the other walkers heading out, we headed off around the lake taking the numerous sidetracks to see the round lake from all angles. Lost in our thoughts strolling along the thick, dark rainforest track we were suddenly scared out of our thoughts by pounding footsteps coming up very fast behind us. Julie was behind me and her combined scream  and yelp stopped me in my tracks - oh god am I next? I quickly turned around to see two young backpacker joggers running past her saying "Excuse us". They ran past me, I gave them a wave as they quickly disappeared around the next bend, after which I returned to Julie, took my backpack off, held her for several minutes until she settled down before we both changed into new underpants.

The  beach

Julie walking under a silver fern

The rest of the walk was nowhere near as eventful. We came across numerous silver ferns which were the first ones we had ever seen. The ferns are silver on their stems and on the underside of their fronds. For 100's of years, Maori used the stems and fronds to mark their paths at night until the Eveready fern was discovered in late 1896. Half way around the lake is a beautiful beach which is popular for picnics and swimming. We chose to just walk it as we had no food or clean swimmers, plus it was cool and overcast. We could have done some washing though.












After a great walk we headed home and so ended another day.

I was able to climb this silver fern and photograph it from above.

Wednesday 15 February - The weather:-  Tomorrow and Friday are both forecast to be wet and today fine, so we planned that today would be our "Tommy Tourist Day" by seeing all the big  tourist sights in the region. 

Boat ride to the Thermal Park

Up and out early we started with Orakei Korako Thermal Park. Being early and first there, we knocked on the owner's door, woke him up, cooked he and his family breakfast, helped them with the day's crossword then got them to boat us across the lake to the start of the walks around the park. 

Having the place to ourselves we wandered up and down for an hour and a half on the boardwalks beside steam vents, bubbling pools of boiling water and mud and just generally breathed in the clear, fresh, sulphur smelling New Zealand air.

Boiling mud - see the face?

The exact moment when Julie realised why I took the photo.

Eventually we had seen everything and other people had started to arrive, so we caught the boat back over the lake, did the breakfast dishes and had a coffee before setting off to our next touristy thing.

That thing was Craters of the Moon. Again located in a geothermic active area but this time surrounded by geothermic power generators, we walked around a sunken crater with steam pouring out of weak spots in the earth's surface. 

One can only enjoy so much sulphur-laden air before one must have something to eat. That something was lunch and what a fine lunch it was - no Indian. Filled to the brim with beautiful Thai food we headed off to the famous Aratiatia Rapids.

Aratiatia Rapids - scene of last week's tragedy

Aratiatia Rapids is where New Zealand's longest river, the Waikato, has been dammed and four times a day they release water through flood gates as a tourist attraction. Unfortunately last week a group of young people decided to get a closeup look at the raging torrent that flows through the gorge every two hours from 10am until 4.00 pm. Apparently scrambling past the 4 million signs that tell you to stay away, they waited and watched as a wall of water came at them. One young woman was killed and the others just scrambled to safety. So the water release is now stopped until authorities investigate. We did hang around for the 2pm spill just in case but, as the additional 4 million signs said would be the case, the gates did not open.

The narrow bit 

Further upstream is the famous Huka Falls. The falls are where the normally 100 metre wide Waikato River narrows to just 15 metres and the river flow of 220000 litres per second drops 11 metres into a massive swirling plunge pool. Given it is New Zealand's most visited and photographed attraction, we visited it and photographed it as well. Here there are numerous viewing spots, loads of walks, just as many bicycle tracks and heaps of car parking. Although there are a lot of visitors I have to say that it is well designed and laid out.

Jet boat at the base of Huka Falls

Julie at Huka Falls

Lake Taupo - note the active volcano in the distance

OMG what a "Tommy Tourist Day" we have had. Arriving home I rubbed the zinc cream off my nose, changed out of my blue and white checked pants, took off the bucket hat and settled in for a well deserved wine and beer. So ended a great day.

The well deserved wine and beer I wrote about.

The next two days, just like the forecast said it would, it rained. If it wasn't raining it was pouring. We recorded over 140mm of rain over the Thursday and Friday. So we are now really well rested and ready for adventure although we did sneak out for three short walks this afternoon once the weather had settled a bit.  Further adventures will happen tomorrow as we move locations from Lake Taupo to Omato, near New Plymouth - about a 4 hour drive to the west. The weather is forecast to get better too.

Hot!

Thermal pools

Views over Lake Taupo

All-in-all a very good first week.

Julie's ankle is holding up well, in fact, no problems at all. It's more about gaining confidence on slippery, uneven surfaces and building up the fitness levels again.

Time to publish this Post.

Hope you enjoy it.

JeffnJulie
The Grey Gonads (in New Zealand)