A busy day on the road

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Day 32 - Sun March 7th

Our final destination for the day was Tongariro National Park but we had a busy day stopping at various places along the way. First one was at Wai-o-tapu, a thermal wonderland with lots of different coloured pools with minerals in them to walk around and look at. They also had a geyser which only erupts once at day (with a bit of help from the right scientific ingredients) at 10.15am so we rushed there with crowds of other people to see it do its thing and then did the walk around the park afterwards. Some of the pools were very vibrant colours but everywhere you went you constantly got the sulphur bad eggy smell and it was pretty overwhelming in places. As we were driving away from the park we noticed a few cars parked at the side of the road and people were bathing in the river, which it turns out was called Kerosene Creek. So Jake jumped in and discovered that there were two rivers joining, one cold and one hot, so depending where you sat you could choose your water temperature! The down side of the relaxing dip was that when Jake got out of the water, he smelt bad, real bad, and there was no shower to clean off in!

Next stop for the day was Aratiatia rapids where there is a dam that opens every few hours and you can watch the huge volume of water rush downstream. We walked over to the bridge 10 mins before the gates were due to open and noticed a couple of higher lookout points further down. The sign said the highest viewpoint was a 10 min walk away so we quick marched up the hill and made it with plenty of time. The water was released and it was like a domino rally as it filled one pool and then overflowed and then filled the next pool etc, but looked good.

Next stop was Huka falls where two rivers meet and squeeze between some rocks creating a fast flow of water. They were similar to the rapids we had already seen but were still impressive, just busier with other people.

As we still had a long journey ahead we got back on the road and drove through the town of Taupo, which has the largest lake in NZ and looked like a nice place to spend some time exploring, but we just didn’t have the time. It is supposed to be the place with the highest number of skydives in NZ, and with the stunning view of the mountains and lakes you could see why.

We finally made it to Tongariro and discovered that we would have to be up at 5am tomorrow to start our walk, so we prepared our clothes and snacks for the next day and hit the hay early.

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