Before we reached Taupo we stopped for the usual photo opps - I was quite happy to do this however as we were passing fantastic volcanic areas, past Mount Doom of Lord of the Rings fame - shown in the pic here. It seems that almost everyone you come across here had something to do with the production of those films - Smiley, our previous driver was one of the location managers on the production team, and Jarrad, our driver today well, his dog was the one that starred in the first film! Anyway, back to the Volcano's - they have official names obviously Mount Doom is not it's real name but I can't remember them now so will add them later.The landscape of the North Island is dramatically different from that of the South Island - while in the South you'll find Snow capped mountain ranges, in the North, you still get some of those but you also get rolling hills and alot of greenery - in some ways very similar to England - as well as the diagonal line of volcano's that run through the island. Active Volcano's can only be found on the North island, the reason for this and difference in landscape is all due to the techtonic plates that New Zealand is settled on. In the South Island the plates meet equally and the movement of them pushes upwards creating the Southern Alps mountain ranges that you see all around, while in the north, one plate is positioned just under the other and when they push together, while they still push up some mountain ranges, the difference in height also results in the dramatic volcano's you see running up through the North island. So, when you're driving through you can look to one side of the bus and see snowcapped mountains and on the other is volcanic crators and active volcano's. It really is breathtaking, especially if you're a geek like me and are fascinated by such things - I blame Dad's love of Volcano's for that. I remember him watching all sorts of documentaries on them when i was little and i think i was quite enamoured by the thought of being s Daddy's girl!!! ;-)
Anyway, we stopped in a little place called Turingai for lunch and then had one final stop at Huka Falls in the Waikato River Valley before we reached Taupo. As you can see from the pic, the scenery was beautiful once again. We checked into Urban Retreat hostel mid-afternoon and spent the rest of the afternoon mooching around, watching Agassi in the US Open - we all got a bit caught up in that but once we'd seen him win (yay!) we headed to town for a cheeky hot choc (or in my case hot frothy milk - yes, i know I'm a child but i love it so there) and to check out the famous Lake Taupo - which is in fact a filled in crater created from a long ago volcanic eruption and measures 40k x 30k in size!!! It's a beautiful setting and you can see why the place is so popular. Once we'd watched the sunset over the lake (beautiful as you can see from the pic below) we headed back to the hostel to get some food before flaking out with tea, biscuits and far too many sweets in the TV room - no bar for us tonight - the thought of drinking wasn't too appealing for me, funny that! It didn't take too long for us to get tired enough for us to head to our beds.. i was ridiculously grateful for mine it won't surprise any of you to know! This night also saw Aid's all time low reached... for the sake of her dignity all I'll say is; bin, crisps and a lot of laughing! Good work Aid!
Somewhere through the day I'd managed to chat to Jarrad - our driver - about the Tongariro Crossing, i really wanted to do it but according to him and several others at this time 
of year (Winter that is) it's fairly treacherous and they only go on the crispest, brightest of winter days. The volcanic landscape really interests me and I so wanted to do it but all their talk of it put me off a little so I decided to put that on the list of things to come back and do in the Summer one year (that list's getting a tad long now though!). Becky and Aideen were heading to Rotarua on Sunday too so I decided to go with them as there were things I wanted to do in Rotarua that would be far more fun in a group than on my own.
So, that decided we had 2 nights in Taupo - the first spent recovering from the excesses of my last night in Wellington and so the 2nd (Saturday night) was earmarked for a night out! Saturday daytime we decided to explore Taupo and went in search of the natural hot springs that the area, thanks to all the volcanic activity there, is famous for. Once again, the hot springs are free - bonus!! It was a good 40 minute walk to the springs, the sun was shining and it was lovely - once there we got into our bather's and basically got into a bath... it was gorgeous. There were a few other bods there too but not too many and it was lush, just sitting around in the sun, in bath-like waters. Heaven!
Once we'd whiled away the afternoon in the water we headed back to the hostel and cooked up some culinary delights - pasta again then!! ;-) then got ourselves clean and tidy and headed out for a few bevvies to Mulligans - Taupo's not the biggest of towns so there aren't that many choices for a night out and to be honest, the evening started pretty slowly, there weren't many people about (guess it's out of season) and there was a somewhat dubious band playing - with what looked like a 14yr old lad on keyboards - who actually turned out to have the most amazing voice and remind me of a young Jarrad - all very disturbing! After a few comical encounters with some not so bright locals... when they discovered Becky and Aid were nurses they asked 'what, in a hospital??' hmm... ok lads!! Anyway, we made our escape and headed to the bar in an attempt to revive the evening - we were one drink away from calling it a night about 10pm then all of a sudden it was 2am and we were only just leaving the pub... oops! Was all very amusing in the end, with Becky getting a personal performance of the Huka, instigated by the Rugby being on that evening, and Aid and I being subjected to some rather baffling honesty.... don't think it really was the best policy for the people in question!! haha!Anyway, we'd managed to continue the trend of getting ourselves drunken when we had to be up for the bus in the morning so after satisfying our late night munchies back at the hostel, we headed to bed to catch some shut eye before having to face the inevitable hungover bus ride!! There's a surprise!! x
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