Taupo

Our last stop that morning was Huka Falls. Now, what do you think about when you hear a term like that? I picture a vertical waterfall, and since this was such an attraction I figured it would be a very tall one. What a surprise, then, to walk through a row of trees from the carpark and see this! The first picture is the view upstream, and the second is looking downstream from the bridge over the falls.

I called Simon on a video call while we were on the bridge. He had tried to call me the night before and I missed him, so since this was his lunch break I got hold of him. That way, he got to see what we were seeing, in real time, and we could hear about what had just happened to him. The gear box on his truck had blown up the day before, and he was borrowing one of our vehicles, so we had some things we needed to discuss (no, it wasn’t a problem that he was borrowing a vehicle from us!).

Looking back upstream toward the bridge, after we walked down to another viewing platform.

At the end of the narrow gorge, the water leaps over a ledge and rushes away.

And, of course, we took a video of this, too! It has to be seen in action to be believed.

Huka Falls was not quite our last stop of the morning. Before heading back to our friends’ house for lunch, we stopped at an overlook from which most of the city of Taupo could be seen. My favorite part of the scene was the mountain that stands over the city and the lake.

Late that afternoon, Gayle took the children to swim in the lake. It was chilly, so they didn’t stay long, but they had a lot of fun collecting pumice that washed up on the shore. When they got back, we gave the girls a bubble bath–the first one in their lives! What fun!

While we were in Taupo, we wanted to see Craters of the Moon. This is a geothermal valley with steam vents everywhere you look. The walk through that valley was my favorite place to explore in that area! It started raining while we were about halfway through the walk, but that didn’t last long and we soon dried off afterwards. It did make it a bit confusing for me to sort through our pictures and put them in order, because I switched from taking pictures with my camera to my phone, as it is supposed to be waterproof.

It’s pretty amazing to look out over a valley and see steam coming up everywhere! As Miss Joy said in the first clip I included in the video tour in this post, it looked like a lot of fires–she thought it was houses burning!

The children were getting goofy!

Miss Joy wanted to take a picture of the three of us.

Esther wanted one of the three sisters.

Part of the track went along the top of the hill at the edge of the valley.

We spent two nights at the home of some dear friends in Taupo the first week of February. The morning of the day we were there was spent doing some sightseeing in the area. Our first stop was the Aratiatia Rapids on the Waikato River. A dam was built there to produce hydroelectricity; because there is such a drop in the river at that place, the dam does not have to make a very big lake. The gorge below the dam has very little water in it because of the dam, but several times a day, at set times, water is released so that tourists can see the gorge fill. That was fascinating to watch! When we first arrived, one of the gates was open a little, so there was some water in the gorge, and that was beautiful. Then, the gate was closed for ten minutes, and almost all the water drained out of the top of the gorge. Soon, the siren started going periodically, to warn people who might be in the gorge below that the water would be coming soon. Then, both gates were opened, and we watched the river fill up. What a sight!

I put together a few video clips to show some of what we experienced here. Warning: this starts with a loud siren, which is intended to warn people to get out of the gorge before the water starts coming.

On our way to the next attraction, we passed this plant which produces electricity from geothermal energy.