Taupo, North Island, New Zealand

Our day began early, as we headed toward Picton on the north end of the South Island. Our first surprise came only a few minutes after we left our accomodations in Kaikoura: a fur seal was hitching a ride along the highway. (Well, not actually, but it did look like it.) We arrived at the Interislander facility over an hour early and waited to drive our rental car on board the Atares.

The Atares, the ferry we boarded, was cut completely in half in dry dock just over a year ago, had thirty meters added to her midsection, and welded back together.

While on board, I purchased a Wi-Fi certificate, and uploaded photos to Facebook and to my blog page. Unfortunately, during the past week, I had forgotten that I had lost my after-hours check in information for our condo in Taupo when all my email had disappeared in Australia. I had forgotten to copy down the information from the email from Lakeside Villas.

Thank the Lord that I met a very helpful woman, Amanda Thatcher, who worked in the gift shop on board. I planned to purchase a phone card for their pay phone, but she got permission for me to use the ship’s phone to call our condo in Taupo. I got through the first try and got the code for the lock box so we could get access to the key to our unit. I found out that she loves Facebook, and she is now my first Kiwi Facebook friend!

The ship’s galley offered American hotdogs on their menu so I thought I’d have one since it’s been quite a while since we’ve been home. Perhaps to a Kiwi what I was served tastes like a hotdog, but to me it was quite tasteless; like biting into a sausage with substance but no flavor at all. The bun, ketchup and mustard were about the same as in the US but I had to throw out the hotdog after one bite, I just couldn’t stomach it. But it kind of proves a point about the food in both Australia and New Zealand—a lot of it is very bland, made without many spices, salt, pepper, or sugar. (We’re pining for the food we’re used to—which isn’t to say that the food here isn’t good, it’s just different from America.)

We docked in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, after a three hour crossing that was rough at times. The wind was blustery, especially through the channel between the islands, where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean. Once back on the highway, we headed north to Taupo. It was a fairly uneventful drive. New Zealand probably has only about 100 miles of four lane roads in the entire country. All national highways, like SH 1, have two lanes and most of the time you are driving left or right around curves or up and down mountains and hills. The speed limit is 100 KPH which is a touch over 60 MPH, but the Kiwi’s drive much faster around the curves than I felt comfortable doing.

The most prominent geological figure between Wellington and Taupo is Mount Ruapehu. (Don’t ask me how to pronounce it. The names in New Zealand are harder to say than those in the Old Testament.) It’s an extinct volcano that covers an enormous area and extends 2797 meters (close to 9000 feet) high. The top is covered by snow and clouds swirled around the peak as we caught glimpses of it as we drove to the tops of some of the hills that surround it. It’s part of Tongariro National Park, which is a big ski area for the Taupo region.

The city of Taupo sits on the northeast corner of Lake Taupo which is about thirty miles wide and thirty miles in length; the largest lake in the North Island. (Alana, our Lord of the Rings guide, said that New Zealanders are very literal. When they give a place a name, they don’t use a lot of imagination, thus: North Island and South Island for the two main islands of New Zealand.) Most of the names of places in New Zealand were named by the Mauri people who came to the islands in 1251 AD from Hawaiki. (I think that’s the correct place.) I’m not sure that all of their names are that much more imaginative either. Today we toured the Waitomo Glow worm cave and we found out that in the Mauri language wai means water and tomo means hole: thus—water hole is the name of the cave. (A small river runs through the cave.)

Monday, October 15, our first full day in Taupo, we spent getting ourselves organized for the rest of our holiday. The one place we did visit was Waikato Falls (The word for water is in this again.) which is just north of Taupo. Water from Lake Taupo flows north and there are at least seven hydroelectric stations along its length that provide 15% of New Zealand’s energy. The large majority of power generated here is hydroelectric, geothermal, and wind. The air and water are very clean here and the Kiwi’s want to keep it that way. The falls are only about twenty or thirty feet high, but an enormous volume of water flows over them through a narrow limestone channel.

Tuesday, since the weather report was for a mostly sunny day (what the weather reporters call fine) we decided to travel about two hours northwest to Te Kuiti to visit the Waitomo Glow Worm cave. Glow worms make their nests on the top of the cave above the river. They create “fishing lines” from mucus and drop the threads about six to twelve inches from the ceiling. The water brings insects, mosquitoes mostly, into the cave and they are drawn by the light the glow worm emits. Once caught on one of the lines, they are hauled up by the worm swallowing the line and the captured bug. Glow worms use the same chemicals to create their light as do fireflies, but their light is steady. Inside the cave, the glow worms look like stars in the heavens, the roof is just covered with them and there is utter silence in their environment—pretty eerie in a way, but beautiful and unique. Glow worms exist in New Zealand, Australia and Tasmania, but nowhere else on earth. They were quite an inspiring sight.