Lake Taupo

We bypassed Wellington on the basis that we could go to a big city anytime and ended up at a seaside town called Paraparaumu (for no other reason than you have to stay at a place with a name like that). From there we drove for the best part of five hours and around 350 klicks to the virtual centre of North Island and NZ'z largest lake, Lake Taupo. One memorable stop on the way was to see the stunning Mount Ruapehu which is not only an active volcano but blew up as recently as 1995 and ruined the 1996 ski season.

For the budding geologists amongst you, Lake Taupo was created by a Big Bang 26,000 years ago the size of which is purported to compare Mt St Helens as a minor firecracker. The lake itself has a single outlet which also happens to be NZ's longest river, the Waikato. Cue a series of rapids and spills of which the most impressive is probably the Huka Falls. We spent much of the first and second days touring up and down the river stopping at the various lookouts and wearing out the batteries on our cameras.

The third day was more of a chill out, the morning taken up with recovering from a huge Thai meal the night before and planning where the hell we were going to go next. Tempus very much now appears to be fugiting as far as our remaining days are concerned. For the afternoon, a peaceful cruise around the lake in the "Barbary", an ocean-going racing yacht once owned (it says here) by Errol Flynn.

Our last evening was supposed to be a pub crawl along the riverside looking for the best place to see the sun set (you have to try them all out, you know!). This actually turned out to be a bit of a surprise. Those of you who know me know I tend to escape from the horrors of reality (and that four letter word ending in "k") with a cold beer and and large Sci-fi book at my local, the famous Salmon Leap. Once upon a time, my favourite barmaid in said establishment was Mandy but she left. As it turned out, she went further than I thought but, as it also turns out, not quite far enough. So, who should grab hold of Linda as I was again making my way to another bar but said Mandy, and her husband John, and her parents Michael and Pauline. C'mon guys, you can't get any further away from the Salmon Leap and stay on the same planet! So there we are, in yet another bar, some 11,500 miles away from where we started. Do you think that anyone else in that bar has even heard of Totton?