Water, water and more water

I left Napier fairly late today, which I was OK with, and got on the road heading to Lake Taupo. I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do here so somewhere along the way I stopped to check my notes. My 1st stop was a place called Huka Falls, and I wasn’t prepared for these! This river was massive compared to a lot of water sources that feed waterfalls. It was crystal blue water that ran down a deep and wide gorge, and then dumped over and into a large basin at the bottom. The falls themselves were not really tall but the sheer amount of water was amazing. The amount of water that goes over the falls will fill 19 Olympic sized swimming pools in one second. I can hardly wrap my head around that, talk about a lot of friggan water! The falls and the hydro plan also supply 15% of the electric in New Zealand, which is pretty cool. The waterfall and the rapids that lead up to them are nuts, I was thinking it would be cool to tube down till I got up close to them, haha no way in hell would you ever catch me on ANYTHING trying to navigate these things. One guy went down in a little kayak and I thought, adrenaline junkie hahah but kudos for him, and he survived!!

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After this, I headed across the main road to the Craters of the Moon. Kind of an odd name of a place if you ask me since we are on Earth, and these don’t really look like the craters on the moon but who am I to judge. This place was a thermal field, which is basically the fact that under it some who knows how many miles or what not is lava where water ends up reaching it and steam is pushed upwards through fissures in the land. The land is actually unstable in a lot of places so they ask that you stay to the paths that they have. There were multiple craters to see and there were tones of fissures that were spewing steam the whole time I was there. There was actually a little one next to the path that I found and you could see the steam, and if you put your hand over it, it was fairly warm. I can imagine how warm the large ones were (aka: BURNS!!). I did the loop in about an hour which allowed me to get an overview of the whole area from way atop a hill. On the way up you encounter a fissure where the steam is coming out so hard that it whistles as it does. I hopefully got it on video for people to hear because it was really amazing.

A large crack for steam to escape

Crater with hot steam

After this I headed into the town of Lake Taupo. There were some Maori carvings out on the lake that I wanted to see, so I found a boat that would do a tour of the lake and bring you to the carvings. BINGO! For less than $40 I got unlimited wine, some pizza and other snacks, a boat cruise and the opportunity to meet another awesome person. I met Tamara because she seemed to be along so I asked if she minded that I sit with her, of course she didn’t (thank goodness). We got to talking about where we were from and she is from Germany but you would NEVER guess it, because she speaks really good English and doesn’t have the typical German accent. She was taking a break between high school and college and has been on the road for 6 months touring all over. She is hoping to get into MIT in Boston but if not will attend a college back in Germany. I told her if she comes to Boston, we can meet up yet again.

Our boat started the tour and pointed out a few things of course none of which I can remember now but it was about the history of the lake. I do remember it was formed by 2 volcanic eruptions and one of them was documented all causing problems all the way to area of China back in like 186AD or something. I know, super specific right?! Anyhoo, we made it to the Maori carvings in the stone and they actually only date back to 1979, which I was surprised about. But they person who carved them did it with tools the Maroi would have used back in the older days and created some awesome carvings. The largest one was of a chief’s face, there is a story behind it but that one I don’t remember. There were also smaller carvings to the left, one of a lizard that is native to NZ, one of the wind, a few of women and then some other creatures. It was really cool to see these, even if they are not ancient.

Maori Carving of a Woman

Carving of their Lizard

Traditional Maori Mask

After this we had the opportunity to actually jump into the lake. There were only 3 of us that did, myself, Tamara and one other girl. I was the only one in a bathing suit but the other two were courageous enough to go in with just their bras and underwear. I jumped 1st from the top of the boat and it was fantastic! I thought it was going to be super cold like the glacier water in the South Island but it was refreshing and crystal clear. The lake is actually the water supply for the Taupo area and you can drink it as is, which Tamara was doing lol. We got to jump off it a few times which was cool. And of course (my dad would be super proud of this) people were watching in awe…..like come on guys you have never seen people do this before (granted they ranged in ages) but still. So I decided to give them a chance to feel the water. SO I climbed to the top again and cannonballed my sorry ass right into the water. Bahahhaahha I soaked a whole bunch of people. Some laughed and some didn’t but I didn’t really care. That is what you get for standing so close to the edge on a boat with people jumping off of it. After we got back on the boat we had a bit more of the tour left, so we dried off and got to watch the sun start to set on the lake while we made our way back to land.

Tamara and I decided to hang out that night and went to a location on the lake where you could create your own hot springs pool to sit in. We were lucky and someone had already dug a partial one, so we hopped in and started making it deeper and wider. Let me tell you, this water was HOT!!! The reason the lake wasn’t cold is because the water is heated from below from these vents, and when you only have a little bit of water in a small area, it is really hot. The Maori used to cook their food by putting it into the hot water springs. It is hot enough to not burn yourself (at least right away) but not cold in anyway. We sat in the nice hot baths watching the sun set over the hills in the area. It was Valentine’s Day, now that I think about it, and it was nice to have an ending to a day like that. Her boyfriend is at home in school so at least we had one another to keep company. We talked and hung out for over and hour before we decided to call it a night. We mentioned if we were both in Rotorua at the same time we would try to meet up again, so I am hoping that on Tuesday we can chill again.