Hello and welcome to this week’s mrlukeniktravels blog post coming from Taupo, New Zealand. The office view this week looks out onto a sun-drenched Lake Taupo and snow-capped Mount Tongariro in the distance. Quite a scenic view. Since my last post post I have been busy exploring the local area and, like Rotorua, the geothermic activity. So, without further ado, here we go…
Mt Tongariro across Lake Taupo.
Lake Taupo is a large body of water in central North Island in New Zealand’s primary geothermal region. The volcanic activity brings fertile soils and black sandy beaches. The region also contains the world’s first large-scale geo-thermal power station entering service in 1958. The geo-thermal steam is used to drive turbines that produce electricity. Capping private boreholes around protected geo-thermal areas has lead to increased pressure and activity on the surface. An example of this the Craters of the Moon Park where activity has expanded considerably as a result of the caps. The park contains many steaming vents and extremophile plants, most of these are unique to this area. Any areas of exposed soil are dyed yellow or red from the high sulphur and iron levels. This does give the park a moon-like appearance!
A mud pool at the Craters of the Moon park. Sadly it hadn’t rained recently, so the mud was not very active.
One of the reasons for me being in New Zealand, other than escaping winter, is to enjoy the outdoors. As a part-time adrenaline junkie I am making the most of some nerve-wracking experiences. Having come all the way to New Zealand I should take it all in. In Taupo this has meant completing a bungy-jump. Despite a reasonable amount of climbing experience, it is still a very different feeling to deliberately jump off an otherwise serviceable platform! My jump was over the waters of the Waikato river, unfortunately the river level was too low to get my body wet. Being at 9:30am there was not much of crowd to watch, which made jumping easier I think. The weight of the rope hanging down meant that my legs didn’t tremble as much as I feared they might. I really enjoyed the experience and hope to do another at some point later on in my trip.
No time for second thoughts now!
As I prepare to move on tomorrow, today is filled with incredibly exiting activities like laundry, packing and sorting out bus tickets. It is a glamorous life living out of a backpack. Perhaps this aspect of the lifestyle doesn’t make it on to the social media adverts imploring people to travel the world! Another less exciting aspect of my travels is the time spent getting to, waiting for and on public transport. I am thankful that in this country, unlike Canada, few journeys last more than a couple of hours. There will be larger, less compact countries to travel across later in my trip. Fortunately I decided to keep my Spotify Premium subscription which is a lifesaver on long journeys with plenty of downloaded music and podcasts. For any Belinkers out there: what a season finale!!
I write this on a Tuesday morning New Zealand time as yesterday we had a 9 hour power cut. Apparently it was the result of a fault at the aforementioned power station cut power for around 16,000 premises. It was eerily quiet in town yesterday, most shops and businesses were shut and the bar downstairs muted. Thankfully power was restored before darkness fell and suddenly air chill units burst back into life. Here in the hostel an Air New Zealand 1,000 piece puzzle was completed, so a productive day!
Watch out(!)
That is about all for this week’s update from Lake Taupo. Tomorrow I head off to Napier and the Hawke’s Bay region on the Pacific Coast again. I am gradually making my way south towards Wellington. As always there are regular updates on my Twitter feed @mrlukeniktravel and pictures on my Instagram @mrlukeniktravels. So from a sunny but breezy Lake Taupo, stay safe and travel on!
One of the non-natural highlights of Taupo, a McDonald’s partly in an airframe.
