12/09/10

We woke up to a rainy day so had a long morning in bed.
When we eventually got up I decided we should try and wash our hair in the basin. So we did. It was quite cold and took ages as one person had to help the other. Next time we'll boil some water beforehand and maybe use the platypus to help. It was very nice to have clean hair though.

We left the campsite at 10am and headed for Taupo. We briefly left the rain behind us and managed to get one picture of the lake from the roadside, but once we parked in the town and wandered around it was pouring again. Tom had got jealous of my hat as we had been in so much rain already, so we went in a hunting and fishing shop to get him one. He found a nice brown leather one (but not as nice as mine!) which he looks great in. He also got a head torch to be more like me :). We went to a nice cafe to shelter from the rain which was very busy as it was so nice. Tom had french toast with bacon, caramelized banana and maple syrup and cream (all at once!) and I had some roulade thing with tuna.

One of many hot chocolates.

Upon leaving Taupo we left the rain behind again and headed for Whakapapa Village in Tongariro National Park. We went to the visitor centre to get the weather forecast for the next day: 'showers and mainly cloudy' and did a short 2 hour walk to Taranaki Falls. It didn't rain! We had stopped to see Huka Falls just before Taupo which was very impressive and Taranaki didn't quite compare. The Waikato River leaves Lake Taupo and carves a deep, fairly narrow channel through rock to form rapids leading to the Huka Falls - a lot of water goes through very fast and it was a vivid blue for some unknown reason. As we were at the viewing platform for the falls a water jet engine boat for thrill-seeking tourists (with money) came up close to the falls, well as close as they would allow which was still about 10m away. Apparently this type of boat was invented in NZ and we left trying to figure out how the water is pushed out the back of the boat with such force.

The path to the Taranaki Falls had superb views of the volcanoes either side, one of which is Mt Ruapehu, but we saw none of it due to thick low cloud. Better luck tomorrow, we thought. We drove to the Mangahuia campsite and chose a spot in a small campervan-sized clearing. We were both quite full from lunch and had honey sandwiches for tea and an early night in the rain again.

Apparently Whakapapa Village is about 1100m above sea level, higher than Scafell Pike the highest point in England, and we did notice it was cooler than usual, but otherwise we couldn't tell as we really couldn't see a thing.

In Taupo we saw a shop called 'Shirley's Shoes' which we took a photo of.

Shirley's Shoes in Taupo.