The day(s) in numbers:
345 km driven.
1 desert driven through
Rate of waterfall seen: 220,000 litres/second.
0 fish caught.
Swear words aimed at wind, fishing line and hooks: >100
I am lumping days five and six together because I have stayed in the same place for two nights, and not enough happened on Day 5 to warrant its own blog entry. I drove up from Palmerston North to Taupo on Thursday afternoon. Here is the map to keep you all in the loop:
J - Palmerston North. K - Taupo.
I had an accidental lie-in on Day 5 and didn't wake up until 10 minutes before checking out time at 10 am. I spent the morning in the town library on the free wifi doing the blog and eating a stale chocolate brownie that had the consistency of a breeze block. I eventually set off from Palmerston North at about lunctime, but not before seeing the tour de NZ set off. It is not actually called that but it is a 33 stage national bike race. It was serious enough for each rider to have a support car full of spare wheels and I assume cortisone, blood transfusions and EPO.
The stand out feature of the drive North to Taupo was going through the desert, which makes up Tongariro National Park. The arid, barren plains are dominated by three active volcanoes, Mt Tongariro, Mt Ngauruhoe and Mt Ruapehu. The middle one (I am not typing it out again) played the part of Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings films, in fact the desert was used as the location for the Mordor scenes. I wish I had organised myself a little better so I could have climbed Mount Doom, an understandably popular thing to do.
It is a very stereotypical volcano, with symmetrical, conical sides and a round crater at the top. This is the best one of many photos I took as I drove past it.
I got to the bottom of the Great Lake Taupo pretty quickly and naively thought I was nearly at the town of Taupo which is at the top of the lake. Lake Taupo is huge, it is the biggest lake in New Zealand and the same size as Singapore (which is also what they said about Stewart Island). It seemed an age to drive up the East side of it but the view was awesome.
In this photo you can see the three volcanoes in the distance, it's top notch postcard stuff isn't it?
Eventually reaching Taupo, I found a hostel, and went to buy my fishing license for the following day. I was really brassed off to find that the Taupo district is the only part of the country not covered by the national fishing license I already have. It is something to do with Maori ownership rights over the water.
The next morning (we are on Day 6 now) I set off bright and early, although not really particularly early or bright thanks to an impromptu night out with some strangers who were in the same hostel.
I went out to one of the river recommended to me by a bloke with a moustache in the tackle shop. It was very picturesque.
Using the newly perfected skills I gained from my recent coaching I proceeded to fight a losing battle largely against the wind. I lost patience and got annoyed so after 3 hours or so I jumped out of my waders and packed all my gear back in the car. Squid, my fishing guru, had told me that as soon as I lose patience with fishing, to pack it in for a bit, or I will stop enjoying it full stop. So I got back in the car and went to see some of the other natural attractions the area has to offer.
I thought I would go for a bit of geothermal action and went for a walk around 'The Craters of the Moon.' These are basically fissures, sink holes and craters that release steam and boil mud. The whole place smelled disgusting because of the sulphur being discharged from the vents. I can smell rotten eggs on my t-shirt now, 8 hours after I was there. However, It was something I have never seen before, and was quite amazing to be fair.
I also went to stick my foot in a hot geothermal heated stream that had a load of people jacuzziing in it. It was pretty warm, like bath temperature. It was very strange, and seemed unnatural. You can't really capture temperature with a camera so I won't include the picture of just my foot in water.
Close to Taupo is the famous Huka Falls, it is a kind of a cross between a water fall and some serious rapids. It occurs when NZ's longest river, the Waikato (the only outlet from Lake Taupo), is squashed from the normal 100 m width to a narrow 15 m as it passes through some extra hard rock! The result is a quality display of nature's awesome power:
Here is the Waikato a little way upriver:
And here it is at the falls:
To be honest, my average photography doesn't really capture the whole shebang very well. I took a video too but that was even worse, it made the water look like it was running slowly. It is not, it is going very quickly at 220,000 litres per second.
I went to another recommended spot to see if the outlook looked any better for fishing, As I got out of he car I nearly got blown over so I thought not, which is a real shame. I took a few photos of the lake though, the sun on the water made it look very blue.
Righto that just about covers the last couple of days, finally getting to Hobbiton tomorrow!
Until next time.
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