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Published: October 16th 2019
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20th August - 25th August 2019
To get us off in the right spirits of living in a van, and to ease us in, Charlie had booked 5 nights at an expensive ($50!) fancy campsite called DeBretts in Taupo with pristine heated bathrooms, a big kitchen and for $12 extra you could use their naturally heated thermal pools. Which we took FULL advantage of in the cold weather, even sneaking in a bottle of two of fizzy Lindaur wine to the private pools. It is quite incredible how quickly you become accustomed to walking around in your dressing gown without a care what people think!
The ultimate bonus of this campsite compared to our first night was having power! We could now use our little electric fan heater and warm up the van to make it nice and cosy! We now even had the laptop and could pop on and watch a film, thanks to Megan who was amazing and filled our hard drive with movies.... Netflix is a very rare luxury with campsite wifi limits!
We already had our ski equipment on a long term hire over the whole season for
a great price from The Snow Shop Taupo. Unfortunately the local volcano which happened to have a ski field on it was being battered with blizzards and was not looking very inviting. So we used this time and the campsite wifi to design and order our save the date cards! With all the excitement i think i over celebrated, it is very difficult to monitor how much wine is being drunk from a box into a plastic cup.... The next day i was in need of a junk food resuscitation but didn't feel up to getting out of bed to go to the shops. Charlie stepped up to the mark and let me stay napping in the back of the van whilst he drove me for chips! Hero! Knew i was marrying him for a reason!
Finally the blizzards subsided and we were able to head up Whakapapa to partake in a bit of skiing. It was still pretty chilly and windy and after a few runs on happy valley i wasn't quite ready to step it up and head up to the big boy green runs. It felt much more like a book and relax in
the cafe kinda day. Charlie had taken to it like a duck to water and was advancing much quicker than I could have imagined. Although i was still a little nervous about the whizzing down the hill aspect, you can't deny that there is something magnificent about being on the side of a snowy volcano!
Other than skiing Taupo has a lot more to offer, we spent the next windy day visiting the Huka honey hive which is free to enter and you get to learn about the wonders of the honey bee. You could tell the lack of netflix was getting to us as i think we watched all available bee documentaries which were on a loop over about a 90 minute period. They also had free tastings of mead and a massive hive with glass on one side so you could see right in and watch all the different roles of the bee.
Down the road we had heard about a geothermal walk which also had a selection of farm animals on site. Because we all know that a geothermal tourist attraction isn't complete without a bonus alpaca. Right? So we headed
off to Wairakei thermal valley. Before we had chance to pay our entrance fee the owner was eager to show us some spiders eggs he had in an envelope... When we cautiously went to look inside the prankster released a spring which shot the contents of the envelope flying at our faces! Thankfully it was not full of eggs! Luckily we had a much friendlier welcome from a little black fluffy lamb who seemed to think he was a puppy. following us around and trying to wander in the café.
After paying our $10 we were given a bonus laser gun that would record the temperature of the geothermal features. Some of our readings got the steam at over 90*C! The walk was beautiful if a little unsafe... I kept thinking that if it had been in the UK there would have been barriers and fences everywhere stopping you from getting within touching distance of these sulphur burning pots... New Zealand seems to go with the attitude of "Well, you only touch a boiling geothermal vent once..."
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