We have continued our quiet few days with a leisurely weekend.
It began in Wellington where we had a bit of a chill out and explored the city. It took us most of one morning to refill our gas as we visited numerous petrol stations but that is a long, and not very interesting story! On Friday evening, Jade managed to chip her tooth on a crunchie chocolate bar which led to us all going to an emergency dentist appointment the next day. While parking for this appointment, we also managed to drive under a beam that was too low and cracked off our roof vent, so we now have a hole in the top of the van that we can't fix until Monday in Taupo. At night I had to climb on the roof and rest the broken piece back over the hole, just in case it rains!

We eventually managed to leave Wellington and drove through green, flat farmlands. The further we went, the lushness faded as we drove into baron hilly terrain with an odd mountain poking out. The ground began to level out as we approached Taupo. This town is home to the great lake Taupo, the largest lake by surface area in New Zealand. The sun was setting over the largest, yet most still lake I have ever seen.

Taupo is a small town with a real cafe culture. We arrived on the evening on St. Patricks day and the numerous bars and pubs were packed out. The town in the day is much more laid back with people sitting on the streets with the paper and a coffee or taking to the lake to go fishing. There is also a lot of adrenalin-filled activities to do too. Sally decided to do a sky dive here so Ruth and I went out to the airport with her to see her go and be there when she came back down to earth. We were very jealous as would love to do another one, but Sally thoroughly enjoyed herself and came down ecstatic! We watched her dive video, before returning to the camp site to pick up Jade who was still recovering from her dentist encounter. We returned to find she had scrubbed the camper from head to toe, which was very nice as it smells a bit better now. We spent the rest of the day enjoying the area and stocking up our cupboards again. As it was mother day, I made a Skype call home which was nice, I hope you had a lovely day mum!

It really is a relaxed place here and we have liked it. Our next stop is to be in Rotorua. However, on Monday morning, we were awoken by the rain beating down on the roof and decided we better get our hole fixed ASAP! By the time we eventually reached the garage, we sat and waited for ages until the mechanic told us they didn't have a spare roof part that fitted and instead had taped our old cracked roof on. Fingers crossed it holds up and doesn't rain too much!

En-route to Rotorua we stopped off at Huka falls. Here, water from lake Taupo flows into the river Waikato towards the sea. This is the longest river in New Zealand. The falls are not that large, but the water flows through a small valley to the waterfall where 200,000 litres of water come over the falls every second - enough to fill five Olympic sized swimming pools! Due to all the air the water picks up as it falls, the water had a really light blue colour and was quite impressive. We stayed and observed as long as we could manage, but the rain had not let up and we were pretty cold, so we returned to our van hoping that there wouldn't be a waterfall in there too! But so far, so good and the roof is withstanding the rain allowing us to continue onto Rotorua.

Amy. x