From Wellington to Taupo in a long way

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Another amazing miracule or the amazing luck we have all the time: we are renting a car from a very "cheap company". There aren't much guarantees for what you get. So when we called Saturday morning to say we are coming for the car they only had a small 2-door Suzuki. We have so many things, food etc, how would we manage? We could choose to wait till noon, maybe they'll have more cars but we decided that since there are no guarantees we better take what they have. By the time we reached the agency 1/2 hour later, a bigger car arrived! We couldn't believe our luck, or in fact, it's amazing how much of it we have here all the time.

On Saturday we drove north from Wellington to Wanganui. There were two main attractions on the way (apart from the views that are always attractive). The first was an "artificial nature reserve" with plenty of beautiful animals. We went there because they have the blue duck that is very rare but in fact many other animals were much more attractive. I didn't stop clicking the camera.
The next attraction was a car museum, called "Southward car museum". They have a huge collection of antique cars, collectible cars and home made cars. They are all arranged like in a warehouse, as they have so many, and little explanations if any, but still it was amazing.

On Sunday we tried to see the Taranaki mountain. It's a relatively young volcano, so it has a perfect shape, and it resembles a lot Japan's Fuji mountain. Unfortunately, it is located in one of the rainiest areas of NZ, so it's covered with clouds most of the time, and it was like that when we arrived. So we saw only the lower half of it, which was still nice. Then we drove through a beautiful road to the town of Taumarunui, base for canoe travels of the Whanganui river.
Whanganui river journey is one of NZ great walks. It's different as you don't walk, you paddle... The best part is covered by 3 days in a canoe, with no road access in the way, so it's a full commitment to the river. We booked it for Monday. Unfortunately the weather forecast was "Monday showers, Tuesday more showers, Wednesday heavy rain"... when they asked us if we have enough food in case we are stuck at the camp site for a day because the river is too high, we decided to postpone.. and we drove further north to Taupo.

It rained the whole way but as we approached Taupo the skies cleared and we had a beautiful afternoon. We went to see the big Huka falls, and then we went to see a small stream called "Aratiatia rapids" that was dried when they built a dam here for electricity plant, but they open the gate for the water on specific times. It was amazing to see how the dry stream is filled with water and becomes such a beautiful river with rapids and waterfalls, but after 1/2 hour it's drying again. The last attraction we saw here is a place called "Craters of the moon" - a geothermal active area with craters that are steaming all the time. It's amazing to see - the whole area covered with white steam coming up, and also boiling mud pools. The area is full of places like this but as this is the first one we have seen, it was amazing.

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Photos

The Mandarin duck
At the reserve. I couldn't believe it was real!