Cam & Em's New Zealand Holiday

Woke up to find that the rain had stopped, so the cruise would be fun after all. And fun it was. Captain Bill of the "Barbary" was a real character, and it's hard to know who (him or the yacht) had the most checkered history, with the yacht once being owned by Errol Flynn after he won it in a card game. We cruised around Lake Taupo, sailing when we could find sufficient wind, and motoring the rest. We visited some Maori rock sculptures, the nominal destination for the cruise, but the main feature was just the relaxing time we had floating around and chatting with Bill and Rachel (aka Bash) the rugby playing postie and Commerce graduate. Bill also caught a nice sized rainbow trout for his dinner, then surprised us all by holding cookies off the side of the boat for a pair of ducks that flew up and took them from his hand (apparently chocolate chip is their favourite).

The Making Of...
Lake Taupo was formed approximately 25,000 years ago by an eruption that would have covered the entire North Island with hot, poisonous ash. More recently, Chinese and Roman scholars in 181 AD reported seeing darkened skies and spectacular sunsets that scientists have pinned to another eruption in the Taupo area - the most powerful eruption in historical times. Today the lake is 606 sq km in area and a haven for tourism and fishing. In particular, from being seeded with Brown Trout from Tasmania in 1867 and Rainbow trout from California in 1883, Lake Taupo is know proclaimed as the world's trout fishing capital.

Back to town and we realised it must be the weekend when we bought the paper and found it twice the price, and twice the size of a regular day. We went back to the cafe from yesterday and insisted on giving the people there a reward for returning the camera bag .. well deserved. Three cheers for Shawn and Peter and Coffee Plus!!!

From there we drove out to Wairakei Natural Thermal Valley and took an hour (or so) stroll around the "Craters of the Moon" .. a set of craters formed by the explosion of pressured steam through the ground. It's another surreal landscape that made us think of a battlefield recently hit by bombs. We spent some time chatting to a couple from Melbourne (with many relatives in Perth).

We then drove down to the Huka Falls on the Waikato River, which flows all the way from Lake Taupo to Auckland. The Huka Falls are approximately 7 - 9 m tall depending on the water flow at the time, and are a pretty shade of blue thanks to the light and sky reflected by the very clear water. They are very popular with crazy Kayak daredevils (ok - that's a Jet boat .. the really cool Kayak photo I had here seems to have been removed :-( ). The Waikato River in this area is very heavily used for the generation of hydroelectric power, as well as providing cooling for the geothermal power plants in this area. We had a look around the immediate falls area, and planned to take one of the hikes along the river tomorrow.

Topped up the supplies on the way home, and cooked in the camp kitchen while watching the Aussie netball team beat the Silver Ferns. Aussie Aussie Aussie .. Oi Oi Oi!

Love to Hate
It seems like the legendary Aussie-Kiwi rivalry is taken much more seriously on this side of the ocean. Every time we hop on a tour or talk to any Kiwis in a social setting it's always "ooh .. Aussies. Rugby .. Cricket ..grrrr". They loved talking about the Netball when the Silver Ferns had won the second game, though I figure they'll go quiet on that again now that we took the series. I wonder if they really are big Netball fans, or if this was just a case of "play the cards in your hand" since there wasn't much else for them to hold over us on the sporting arena this year, and they were desperate for something. On our various tours there are continual remarks about how this critter likes eating Australians, for the Australians in the audience the bar is over here, etc, etc. Do we really pay out so much on New Zealanders in the same situation? I don't think so. When we first arrived we read an article in the paper about the scorn and derision that Australians feel towards New Zealanders which we found a real surprise. I believe that this article greatly misinterpreted the feelings of the general populus on the "West Island".

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Albums	01 - 02 - 03 - 04 - 05 - 06 - 07 - 08 - 09 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23

Day 16 - Sat 27 Oct