We chose the Top 10 holiday park as Clairy has become increasingly enamoured with their immaculate facilities and we weren't disappointed here. The shower experience alone was worth the cost of a night in the tent with its automated hot-air toasty changing facility, fancy lighting and super pressured hot water.
She also enticed this furry beast over for a good bit of loving.
'Back off please'...It seemed to be an exclusive event.
Ohakune is also famous for producing some damn fine carrots, as this specimen seems to testify.
We found Carl and Maureen back at work at their cafe/bar/restaurant and had a chat with them. They gave us a very tasty free cup of coffee and suggested some nice things for us to do in the vicinity.
The first was to head up the road on their side of the mountain. It got progressively steeper and steeper, resulting in some definite head under blanket scenarios for Clairy on the way up. There was still a good amount of snow on the mountain. When Carl and Maureen returned from their wonderful relaxing holiday in Samoa they found the ski season had been extended by two weeks, resulting in them being thrown right back into a mad rush at work instead of the chilled off-season they were expecting, poor buggers.
Mount Taranaki on the West Coast way off in the distance. A beautifully clear day.
The heat was perhaps not so wonderful for the poor buggers (though they only have themselves to blame) who were doing a totally insane mountain run, aptly named 'The Goat'. This required them to run over loose shale and huge rocks for mile after mile as well as to climb various running waterfalls. The final 'Mama's mile' was on the horrifically steep last mile of paved road before the ski slopes. Whilst taking these pictures various haggard stringy types huffed and puffed past us. The finish was just past where we stopped to take some photos and they hadn't bothered to close the road for the event. I felt slightly guilty cruising past them blowing carbon monoxide in their beetroot faces.
Nice place for a jog.
There were various walks to waterfalls on the mountain road. In what would turn out to be a familiar theme for the day we decided to just take a few snaps from the car.
We carried on round Mount Ruapehu in order to see the other side and take in some of the landscape of the Tongariro crossing.
Kiwi crossing! A couple of signs had some good quality alterations.
Mount Ruapehu from the north side.
The seemingly totally out of place Château Tongariro.
Fearing another head under blanket situation Clairy wandered around the small Whakapapa village (cheerfully pronounced fakapapa) while I zoomed up to the end of the road to take some piccies. Sadly the views weren't that great up where all the ski lodges are.
The Tongariro crossing apparently encounters some incredible brightly coloured lakes and crosses a number of different vegetation zones, but to make ourselves not feel too bad about not quite having the energy or time to do it I convinced us it would all have looked like the shot below (this was where they filmed some of the Mordor scenes!)
I did get this great shot of the cone of Mt Ngauruhoe (Mt Doom in in LOTR) on the way down.
From there we reached the ridge looking down on the beautifully verdant Lake Taupo.
An incredible difference in colour.
And we headed straight for the Tokaanu thermal baths, finally Clairy's first experience of the abundant geothermally heated mineral waters of New Zealand. It was pretty basic but we had our own private pool, making it almost essential for us to get nekkid! I'm hoping these pictures aren't going to breach blogger's tight codes of conduct.
Oh hell yeah! What a specimen.
Outside the park was a 20 minute walk round the thermally active area. Steamy.
There were some great sulfurous-orangey coloured deposits.
And stinky mud pools bubbling away. I just love the noise they make.
Oh hi! A lovely little fantail came and did a little display for us. They are such gorgeous looking things.
And on we headed around the lake to Taupo itself
Top 10 holiday park, Taupo. Possibly the most over-facilatied of all the holiday parks we have been to - complete with swimming pool, tennis courts, insane fun-park for kids, 1-4 person pedal cars
We visited the honey hive, a place were you can buy pretty much anything that it is possible to make from honey. We had an interesting chat with one of the owners who told us all about the processes involved in getting hives to concentrate on particular flowers for their pollen creating the different honeys that were on offer. One fascinating example was the five finger flower which very rarely is in blossom long enough at the correct time of year for bees to make use of it so creating rare but very tasty honey (we got to sample them all!). There was a live hive in the shop that got access to the outside world through a perspex tube.
After the honey hive we took a peak at the spectacular Huka falls, just outside of Taupo. Here the Waikato river is squashed from 40 metres across into a 10 metre chasm creating a thundering display of beautifully clear blue water.
Rafting not recommended.
It was extremely noisy, and that wasn't just the Japanese tourists.
We popped into town and found ourselves a decent looking bakery. The lakeside seemed a pleasant place to eat our lunch, but we weren't quite prepared for the militant ducks that surrounded us as soon as we sat down.
This particular young lady was outrageously cheeky. She actually made Clairy jump when she reached up and snatched the last of her roll from her hand when she was absently looking the other way.
Then it was time for our next thermal spa. This time it was DeBretts Spa Resort in Taupo. These proved to be a slightly more upmarket affair, although that didn't stop us from lowering the tone and getting nekkid again!
Check out the classy tongue and groove, complete with Maori carvings, and a beautiful lady! At this place they had an assortment of temperatures in the different private baths. I insisted we try the hottest at 41C, but could barely hack it for more than 5 minutes. In a little bit of a goldilocks fashion we tried almost all of them until we
Clairy spotted this gorgeous curly fern outside and just had to get a piccy. Near here we watched a blackbird have a near scorching bath in one of the thermal cooling pools which fed the spa. It seemed to be loving it!
After we had made ourselves nice and pruney in the heat of the thermal waters I insisted I had a go on the slightly dated looking dragon water slide. Its been an astonishingly long time since my last cheese grater experience with the poorly put together Sedgemoor splash version. There were various signs about having to be over a certain height to use the slide, but perhaps rather carelessly nothing about being an enormously tubby bloke.
I chucked myself down it with gay abandon and lay back to get as much speed as possible not really thinking too much about the change in forces that might have occurred now weighing probably three times as much as I did on my last water-slide experience. I suddenly found myself absolutely hurtling down, to the point where I was thrown round the last three corners with such force that I temporarily left the slide before remaking contact with loud painful bangs. I think Clairy and the kids down below thought I was going to smash the thing to pieces. I was actually pretty terrified myself thinking there was a good chance I was going up over the side and into serious injury territory. Check it out...a look of genuine fear!
Fortunately nothing did break and a small child down the bottom told me not to worry, a much bigger bloke than me had done much more damage a few moments earlier when he got stuck and a train of kids piled into the back of him.
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