Taupo
Driving due south from Rotorua, the scenery looked generally like this:
No surprises there, then...
As we were entering Taupo, I decided to stop off and do a bit of a skydive.
I then started to feel a little bit sick, but I'm pretty stubborn and was determined to go ahead with it.
I then started to feel a little bit sick, but I'm pretty stubborn and was determined to go ahead with it.
Here I am, preparing to board the lurid pink aircraft that would take me 15,000 ft into the sky, strap me to a total stranger, and then chuck me out:
I should point out that just three weeks ago, one of these planes blew up moments after take-off, killing all nine people on board. So I had every reason to pray...
Will I survive this daredevil leap into the unknown....?
...............
................
...............
wait for it....
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......................
SPLAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!!!
.....OK so this isn't me. I lifted this shot from Google images. Being a cheapskate, I didn't want to pay $150 for the DVD. But you get the idea...
This, however, is really actually me, coming safely in to land:
And with feet planted back on terra firma...
Ta-daaah!!!
It's an incredibly weird sensation, falling 10,000 ft at 200kph in 60 seconds. If I were travelling vertically, it would take me just over a minute to get from Mile End to Kensington.
Now officially an adrenaline junkie, a couple of days later I decided to do a bit of mountain biking. I also wanted to check out some of the scenery Taupo had to offer from a horizontal perspective.
First stop was Lake Taupo - which, you may be interested to know, is the biggest crater lake in the world. You can, by all accounts, fit the whole of Singapore into it. It's VAST. To walk around the outside would take a couple of weeks. And no one has ever found the bottom. It goes, like, right into the earth, man...
Deep.
Here I am biking along the edge of the lake...
...or should I say, posing on my bike near the lake:
...or should I say, posing on my bike near the lake:
...and here is me posing by the magnificent River Taupo...
...which sets the scene for the world-famous Taupo bungee:
YIPPEEEEEEEEEE!
....OK, this isn't me. I didn't even come close to doing it. There is no way in the world you will ever see me doing a bungee.
And so I rode on, past some more decent riverside scenery...
...and finally arrived my destination - the incredible Huka Falls, where you'll find some pretty angry-looking water:
On reaching the road that would take me back into Taupo, I discovered the puncture I'd been riding with for God knows how long. Now faced with a labour-intensive trundle back to town, I was almost in tears at the thought.
...but praise the Lord! A lesbian couple driving a delivery van took pity on me, and popped both me and my bike in the back:
Check out that bad-ass speaker system!
All I had to do in return was spend 30 minutes helping them make some deliveries around town, and they dropped me off right at the door of my hostel. All's well that ends well.
Back at the hostel (where the dorms smelled like a morgue with broken air con) the barman decided he wanted to throw me a party. OK so it was just me, him and an incoherent Scottish bloke, but it's the thought that counts. It was the perfect send-off before I departed for Tongariro the next morning.
Tongariro National Park
Ahhh, Tongariro. One of my major reasons for coming to New Zealand. With its rugged mountainous terrain, panoramic vistas and perfectly turquoise crater lake, the famous Tongariro Crossing is rated one of the best one-day hikes in the world.
Oooooooooo. Ahhhhhhh.
Unfortunately, I had to lift the above picture from Google images, because when I arrived, things looked a little more like this:
Oh.
So the hike was cancelled. Stoopid bloody weather. Luckily for me, I will have a chance to come back and give it another shot later on in my travels. Phew!
Taupo - Tongariro verdict: Taupo? great! Tongariro? Your guess is as good as mine.
Do I miss England: Not much. Well... apart from the (slightly) more predictable weather, perhaps.
