Taupo

                 Just recently our gracious hosts, Perry and Jenny, let Matt and I have two days off. We had been planning a day trip to the nearest big city of Taupo since we had gotten to the farm because we both like to travel. The timing of this past Wednesday and Thursday was convenient for all of us because their relatives were leaving and could give us a ride to the nearest town, Taumarunui. We left with a REALLY open ended plan; make it to Taupo and back.

                Our only problem was that Jenny’s relatives couldn’t take us very far. They could only take us to a place about 2 hours from our destination. SO how were Matt and I going to get to Taupo. Well…we hitch hiked there! (sorry mom)

 We started out going west on State Route 41. Their highways are a little different from ours by the fact that a New Zealand highway is a two lane road winding through the mountains. We waited for about 45 minutes with only seeing a few cars. At one point it started to pour rain and one nice lady offered us tea at her house down the road. We told her thanks but we were going to wait for a ride. (to be fair I wanted tea but Matt wanted to continue to hitchhike.)

First ride

Luckily about 5 minutes later a van pulled over to give us a ride. It was a SUPER nice couple who own a local camping ground. They have a lot of travelers stay there so often give people rides. They told us they were on their way to hot springs right outside of Turangi. That sounded kind of cool to us so we decided that would be a good stop.

I wanted to swim the the pool below but they only let you swim in these. It's basically a hot tube.

After the quick stop at Tokaanu and the natural thermal springs the couple offered us to give us a ride to Turangi. That was fortunate for us because that was the city at the junction for State Route 1, which is the road that heads straight to Taupo.

We only had to wait for about 10 minutes to get a ride from a man in a truck. We hoped into the cab of the truck headed for Taupo. He was more of a quiet man, we talked for a little until we just ended up driving in silence. He dropped us off in the middle of Taupo right on the lake’s edge.

We milled around for a little walking along the shore of the beach. I found some rocks that float which I thought was really cool. After a while we got bored and I decided to look into the guide book for something fun to do in Taupo. Most of the stuff in Taupo was pretty expensive, bungee jumping, skydiving, lake kayaking etc. We did find what looked like a cool hike that ended in a waterfall. We walked about 2 km before getting to the start of the hike. The start of the hike was in the middle of Thermal Park. They had a fun jungle gym at the park with an even more fun zip-line.

Zip-line in the middle of the park.

After the zip-line we headed for the trail, but got distracted again. It turns out right at the front of the trail is a thermal stream. Think hot tub in stream form, that flows into a big cold river. There was a big group of kids swimming there that invited Matt and I to join them. We made friends with a guy from Auckland who was kayaking down the Waikato river, two welsh boys following the world cup, and a kid from Germany doing the same thing as me!

Thermal Stream

After about 2 hours of chilling in the nice hot stream the two welsh guys, matt, me and a crazy local were the only people left.  We decided to leave the crazy local, and the ladies he was convinced were going to show up at the stream. The two welsh guys offered to give us a ride to a free camper park outside of Taupo that they were staying at. We decided to put off the hike till tomorrow and took the ride! It was there that we pitched Matt’s two man tent and milled around the countless other tents and campervans in the park. We made friends with a Canadian couple who were also wwoofing!  By the time we got situated and all it was 8 and we called it a night around 10.

Waterfall

The blue tent is ours. It was smalll.

The next morning we woke up 9 and started on hike. We got to the waterfall at 10 and finished the hike at 11. After that we walked back into downtown Taupo and got some lunch. After lunch we started hitchhiking home. Which was IMPOSSIBLE. We literally had to wait 2 hours before getting a ride, and that was just pure luck. If you are ever in New Zealand don’t try to hitchhike out of a city, it’s really hard.

We ended up getting picked up by a crazy Maori fellow. I couldn’t understand a word he said so he talked to Matt most of the time, and touched his leg a lot…after that we got FOUR more rides to eventually make it home. One was a mom and her older son, one ride was with a Scottish man who loved NZ so much he sold everything and moved down. Another ride was from a local shepherd who would cruise through these crazy mountain passes at like 110 km/hr. I was a little scared. Not to mention it was raining. Our last ride was with a woman who lived in the town we were trying to get home too. All in the entire ride home wasn’t as successful as the ride to Taupo. It took 6 hours to go what should have taken 2 hours. But we got home safe, and had a good time doing it!

 Mountain on the skyline of Taupo

Give me a ride!

I didn't do that I just thought it was funny

On a less positive note, both my credit cards got denied, and neither company had any record of me even trying to use them.  So neither company could help me at all. AND the call that told me that cost me $18. Woooo

PS. I didn't proof read this cause I was in a hurry sorry.