Day 4 - Rotorua to Taupo

Today was the day of the skydive, but the weather is pretty shocking here in the North Island atm, so it was cancelled - just as I'd talked myself into it. A chance it might happen tomorrow and if not, the. Possibly in Franz Josef. We'll see, but the suspense of not knowing is a killer.

So today we headed up to Te Puia park to see the Pohutu geyser - the largest geyser in the southern hemesphere and part of the Te Whalarewarewatangaoteopetauaawahiaothermal region - yeh try saying that one!

It wasn't fully active while we were there but it was still pretty impressive. The water comes from an underground lake 5km under the surface, and the steam has to be vented to allow the release of pressure.

There are loads of hot springs and pools around and we even cooked our very own boiled eggs in one of them!

After lunch and a quick glimpse of a nocturnal Kiwi bird in the Te Puia reserve we headed towards Taupo, via Rainbow Mountain and Huka Falls.

We called in at the Skydive drop zone where we were told the weather was too bad for a dive, so we were comforted by this adorable little kitty instead!

On arrival in Taupo we then headed out onto the 29mile by 21mile lake for a cruise on Barbary, an old military yacht used to ship injured men back and forth, but ha been on Lake Taupo since 1982. The skipper also told us that if you were to stretch a a piece of string from North to South, the Middle of the string would be 20m under water, due to the curvature of the earth. Pretty cool fact to know. Kamal and I both had a turn at the wheel, Ken caught a trout, everyone played ring of fire and we saw some really cool Maori wall carvings at Mine Bay, stretching over 10m tall, carved in the late 1970s. There are loads more in the rocks on the left too, which aren't that clear in the photo below. But there is a lizard that's there to protect the spirit of the land, a mermaid, the topless girlfriend of one of the carvers and a dragon. It was so so wet though, so not many photos of that!

Fun fact for the day was that it took the Maori people 2 whole years to carve. It was also cool to know that Lake Taupo - which has a surface area of 234 miles (which is the size of SINGAPORE!!! - at the beginning had only three species of fish. Captain Cook and his men introduced trout into the lake to breed. During WW2, those trout were sent upstream, cooked, minced and canned and sent off to troops on the front-line. 

Pretty cool history for a Lake, so not skydiving wasn't the end of the world and plenty more to come tomorrow - plenty more rain too!