Life's motto according to the restaurant that we found in Taupo: "Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely ..., but rather to skid in sideways, no money left, cigar in one hand, favourite beer in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out ...." This was in a Japanese restaurant serving sushi and diet coke.
We had two choices for getting to Taupo. We could follow the main motorway which would have taken an hour or two, or we could follow our GPS. Our GPS was set to "annoying Australian female" with country accent set to max and so we followed her advice. Unfortunately, the roads on the ground and the roads on the map didn't totally agree, but we had fun trying to work out where we were. Sha fell in love with the pink trees. We saw lots of cows and sheep. Our little car needed some help getting up a few of the hills. We drove through Whakamaru. I know this because I asked Sha to take a photo of the road sign so we could try and work out where we were from a normal map. The road sign has a big fish on it. It rained and then was sunny and then rained heavily and then was windy and then was sunny. The mountains got bigger. Sha started to sing Chinese folk songs. There was no restaurant for lunch. Finally we pulled into Taupo and found our Japanese restaurant.
Taupo is on Lake Taupo which is the largest lake in New Zealand. It's huge! It lies in a caldera which formed from the eruption of the volcano that's at the other end of the lake and covered in snow. Apparently the volcano erupts every 1000 years or so.
After lunch and the discovery of New Zealand raspberries we headed off toward the Craters of the Moon. This is an impressive geothermal area full of steam coming through the rocks, bubbling mud and strange vegetation including "Prostrate Kanuka". Apparently the fumes were poisonous and ground temperatures can reach "dangerous levels".We headed back past the Huka falls and found a little motel on the edge of the Taupo lake.
2 comments:
The first couple of pictures could have been taken in England. NZ is obviously full of surprises.
The last two could have been England too... glad to see you're following the advice about keeping the beer!
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