Napier to Taupo

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Our bus leaves for Taupo at 11:30 am so we take our time getting ready this morning while enjoying the view from our room to the sea. We drive through the beautiful Ahimanawa Mountain Range out of Napier. We then drive through miles of pine forests in various stages of timber management. We arrive in Taupo and are picked up by the owners of the Acapulco Motor Lodge. We stayed there in October and they remember us. We walk into town to have lunch and pick up some items at the grocery store. We go to the Information Center to see about transport to the Tongariro Crossing. The weather looks like it might be better to hike the crossing on Thursday but we decide we will think about it. When we get back to our motel room we have some questions so we call the phone number for the shuttle service and get a recording that they are not taking hikers to the crossing on Wednesday due to gale force winds on the ridge. Now we just have to wait it out until the weather forecast on Wednesday. This is the hike we spent three days in National Park to make when we first got to NZ and the weather never cleared for us to make it. Hopefully Thursday will be our day.
We go back to town to the Internet café to take care of some business and answer e-mails. We don’t have time to do downloads on the blog and photos but know we will on Wednesday. We go to dinner at an Italian restaurant we ate at while we were here last time. The restaurants in Taupo are generally not that special, but we had a nice dinner before going back to our room.

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