Blogs from Taupo, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 57

hey all, first up, once again i'm at a computer with no ability to upload photos, so fraid you gotta wait a bit longer. So where were we, last you heard we had just been in a bubling mud pool, chilling out, so we went for a bit of a cultural day the day after that, which was erm......(someday, I loose track). We headed over to the musuem in the morning and it was really amazing, it was really interesting but also quite sad to learn about the maori troups who fought alongside us in WWII and gave there life in the name of a soverign nation they had never seen. After an extended visit to the musuem we headed out to the burried village. This village was buried the last time there was a major ... read more

Tuesday 15th August 2006 On our way out of Rotorua to Taupo, we stopped off to do rafting and sledging. I had done rafting before, so even 'the highest (7 metre drop) commercially rafted waterfall in NZ' didn't tempt me - I went and tried sledging. Sledging is basically throwing yourself down the same white water river, but instead of being in a raft or kayak, you go down in a wetsuit and with a 'sledge' in front of you. This basically looks like the front half of a kid's plastic snow sledge... Oh and you wear flippers to help you fight the currents... It was really challenging to keep swimming against the current. The other guy I did it with was a semi-professional swimmer - so he made me look really bad!! :-( It was ... read more

Rain, Rain and not too much else We decided to spend three nights in Taupo as it was a choice between spending 1 or 3 nights and as it is one of the bigger stops in new zealand (its still tiny) we thought that the three made sense. The main point of being in Taupo is to do a sky dive as its apparently the cheapest place on earth to do one, costing only about 50 pounds which comes with a free ground DVD (which shows you pre flight, your ascent and landing) which is probably less than a third of what it would cost back in the UK. We got there the first time and got the suits on before being told that it wouldnt be going ahead. Which was a bit frustrating as the ... read more

Yesterday I fell out of a plane, well on purpose, strapped to someone with a parachute. The whole experience was awesome. The first split second as we tumbled out of the plane were shear terror but after that it was amazing. I'm in Taupo, by the way (or Toe Paw if you want to prenounce it like a local). Today was a sunny clear blue sky day with the snowcapped mountains of Ruapehu and Mount Doom in the distance and beautiful lake Taupo below us so the views were incredible. The freefall was over so quickly, although it lasts about 45 seconds before they pull the chute. After that we did a few tight spiral turns that sent the blood painfully to my feet but not enough to stop the fun and gently floated to the ... read more

Hello all and greetings from New Zealand! We have just had one of the best weeks of our travels. We started off in a cold Auckland which was bit of a shock to the system! It was nice to be in a city again and we busied ourselves round the shops (mostly on a hunt for jumpers!) Auckland is just a nice place to explore on foot and we spent time just wandering the streets and alleys. We visited the sky tower and watched others throw themselves off it! On our second day we took a free bus tour of the city and surrounds and got to see the beach and some great views of the city and surrounding landscape. After that it was a bus journey to the middle of the island to stay in ... read more