Kayaking anyone?

After a day of resting we thought we would try to do a bit better today, first stop was Huka Falls. It was a pretty large volume of water passing a pretty tight crevice in a pretty decent speed. Apparently the turbines here generate about 15% of whole New Zealands needs, and I guess the thermal provides a healthy chunk for the remaining needs.

About 50-60m straight up, these rather young Redwood trees still impress.

We drove off towards Rotorua, and since Juni had dozed off and slept like a baby we headed all the way to Hamurana Springs north east of Rotorua. On the way to the actual spring we passed through a redwood forest – a early one comparing to the Canadian counterparts but impressive none the less. They were planted, as other various type of trees, to see what grew well and what not. Redwood didn’t become a huge success but it sure looked nice.

I wonder what the ducks think of the clear water.

Photo doesn’t do this justice, I think I stood here five minutes just looking.

The spring and downstream streams are the clearest water I’ve ever seen in nature. It’s quite surreal to see the bottom clearly where there are fish, swans or ducks. The spring itself was one of the highlights so far, the water flowing from it (approximately two olympic swimming pools per hour) was that clear since it’s spent the last 70 years being filtered through the mountain.

We doubled back after enjoying the serenity and views and planned to stop by Wai-o-Tapu but turns out that would close in 15 minutes after we got there but we could at least check out the nearby mud-pools where mud, sort of as the name implies, builder due to various thermal things. The lovely sulphur smell of rotten egg was also present.

Life’s pretty OK

The smoke is from the boiling river below.

We then drove to Waikite just half a mile across the highway for some thermal pools. It wasn’t many people there but the pools were great with various temperatures, some infinity pools and they were all heated by the neighbouring boiling river. Yep, a large part of the river evaporates since it’s boiling water than runs there. Weird.

After soaking a few hours in various pools with Juni we left as happy raisins and left home for a late snack that Mona pulled together from various left-overs from the day before.

Today was a day dedicated to the art of slacking.

I wrote up some blog posts, then entertained Juni for a few hours. Mona went shopping to fetch ingredients for brunch and later home made (well almost) pasta.

After Mona got back and we had a nice breakfast it was time for some more slacking and general browsing the web. We also examine and tested their their Sauna, then the outer spa pools with Juni – who was more happy of the outdoor activity.

As I mentioned the previous day we live next to Taupo lake which is on top of a Supervolcano, and after reading up a bit on it I have to say they are quite interesting – as in end of humanity as we know it interesting. I like the summary statement on the linked Wikipedia side after explaining that some consider an eruption would risk the survival of the entire human race “currently there are no theoretical ideas on how to at least milden an eruption and according to experts it’s unlikely to ever be found”. So, enjoy the ride while it lasts folks!

A day of slacking with Juni is less slacking than one could anticipate but we ended the day by watching first episode of Torchwood since we’re now out of Doctor Who. We were amazed that Netflix could handle the bandwidth constraint but then we had better than NZ average Internet.

Mona had in spotted a Thai Massage place close to us while she was picking up the Indian food yesterday and in her immense kindness made a reservation so I could get a nice massage to compensate for the stressful events the previous days.

An hour of blissful massage (not the best I’ve had but certainly not bad and a welcome relaxation) later we got back to the room and decided that we would move on today so didn’t extend our stay – the reception also had verified that they indeed had the second key so we were all good, and they kindly assisted us with scanning the filled out forms to Jucy so we could send that off as well. I have to laud the hotel, VR Napier Hotel – Tennyson Street, for their service.

Mona can’t decide if it’s the sun or her nutritious brunch that she likes most.

We packed the car but left it at the hotel parking and took another walk in Napier – Mona had a few places she wanted to re-visit before we would leave. I had a very nice “Buddha bowl” for brunch at Chantal, a store that sold all sorts of organic products. We then spent some time at Storm where Mona tried on clothes to her delight until she somehow managed to pick out a pair of four identical (well almost) pants. We then walked back to the hotel and checked the duct tape on the car before driving further towards Taupo.

Compare and Contrast the choice of brunch.

We checked out places to stay from the car, booking.com really has changed how we and I think most other people travel. It was supposed to be a whole day of rain for tomorrow so we went for a little fancier studio with spa-facilities and private spa for an extended slacking period.

It’s weird but these lovely surrounds starts to become blasé – almost at least.

It was a two-hour hour drive, green as usual but otherwise rather uneventful so I did some reading about Taupo, the biggest lake in New Zealand (and the name of the town as well) and learned that it was actually covering a super volcano – sounded exiting.

After a smooth check-in I surveyed the pools from our balcony and saw a bus of senior citizens arrived after and they were in the pool faster than their age indicated. The city centre is a few minutes drive in so after settling in and slacking a bit we took the car in to actual Taupo. It was enough with the Indian food so instead we went to Volcanic Kitchen for wood fired pizzas and craft beer (for yours truly). Tasted really good and we managed to actually finish two large pizzas on our own – but were happy we didn’t need to walk back home.

Well, not all meals can be healthy. “Southern Man” including BBQ-sauce wasn’t bad…

The evening was concluded by trying out the private hot tub with jets to Juni’s delight. Last but not least there was some hiccups with the network connection to the NAS in Oslo so a bit of troubleshooting took place, which I concluded was something is wrong at Synology relay servers despite they indicate on their home pages everything is working – bah.