Up bright and early -- this 6.30 alarm thing seems to work sometimes -- a couple of others are up and, to varying degrees, about. They get picked up by a minibus as we start an early morning tour of the town for pictures of the Art Deco buildings. New Zealand keeps its towns clean, there's very little grafitti, for example, one means being giant hoovers roaming the early morning streets. Sure enough they regularly roamed through my carefully posed scenes. Never mind. We forgot to pop into the Art Deco shop for any (small) memorabilia.
We did stop for breakfast in a quite pleasing little cafe, Thorpe's, still in it's original [Art Deco] building. I partook of porridge with muscovado sugar, sour cream and ground cardomons with [a pot of] single cream which was very tasty at first, very filling and towards the end very sickly. Washed down with a large bowl of latte. Very pleased with breakfast we availed ourselves of a couple of (huge) muffins for lunch.
We started up the Thermal Explorer Highway but diverted almost immediately to the Esk Valley vineyard. We'd had a bottle the other night and took advantage of the winery. Sadly, Esk valley only make blends with reds (Merlot/Cabernet Sauvignon and optionally Malbec) and prefer whites. To my mind, white wine is a bit like comparing lager to ale. If you have to chill it to make it taste decent (and I don't like the taste then) there must be something wrong. Still, after Helen had tried a little of everything (including the NZ$ 48 Reserve which made her want to cough) we blew out big time and bought two bottles. Well, had they actually made Merlots, Cabernet Sauvignons, Malbecs and Syrahs as they suggested, they might have got more money. They were still NZ$ 21 each. That's a hefty chunk of the budget...
We made the mistake of reaching Taupo before trying to book anywhere for the night and found everything full. A few phone calls later and we have a room in Taurangi at the other end of Lake Taupo.
We head for the Craters of the Moon a slightly surreal experience of walking through a large bowl of heathery sort of stuff with huge clouds of steam billowing from the ground. In a few places these are 10-20m diameter craters about 8m deep where the steam has built up then exploded, covering the bowl in up to 5cm of mud. I assume they knew it was about to happen and stopped tourists wandering round. A cautionary tale of one feckless youth who left the path, slipped and boiled himself to his demise lies at the gate, to which we paid close heed. By the end I'd finished my seventh hour of filming of the trip so far -- we've only been gone 10 weeks!
We scoffed our muffins (it now being 3-ish) and headed over the road to the Huka Falls. Not a huge fall by height but an impressive volume of water squeezed down through the narrow 15m wide chasm below us. A meagre 32 cubic metres per second at this time of year. That blows up to 270 cubic metres per second at its peak which must be quite a sight as it's a boiling white mass now. Apparently this stream goes on to supply most of the North Island's electricity.
We spotted a path to "Hot Springs (bathing)" and took a bet that this was one of the few free public access points to a hot water spring. A 40 minute upstream walk later and a small stream comes steaming (literally) down the hillside. There's a brave group of people sat in a small pool in the stream itself whereas most people let the hot bath temperature water mix a little with the freezing (well 10 degrees) river water. We only dip our toes but plan to come back more suitably attired.
The trip to Taurangi is uneventful, we spot a snow capped peak in the far distance (Torongiro [Tongariro!] or Ruehapa [Ruapehu!]) and a dreadful raincloud covering another peak nearby (Torongini or something else). The guesthouse is actually two separate houses a gentle stones throw apart and the town offers little. We plump for a Burger King -- you never know, we might have won a Subaru -- as it's easy food. The alternative was an Italian restaurant or pasta at the guesthouse.
Bellbird Guesthouse, Taurangi S38.98257
E175.81339 Elev. 380m. 
It does feel a bit chilly here, mind, we resolved to not bother with the slightly outside (it's hard to explain) shower so we might ming a bit tomorrow. We did pick up a leaflet on quad biking which sounds like fun. Aargh, another stupid narrow sink. When I'm king...
Copyright 2002 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.