Simon's despatch: Taupo.

We only intended to stop in Taupo to sleep as there's a free campsite and then see huka falls - the most visited falls in NZ apparently!

What was supposed to be a quiet rest day turned out to be quite exciting as the worst winds Taupo had seen in 20 years started blowing in the early hours of the morning.

I woke up as things started hitting our van at about 03:30, Beth was already awake and asked if we should move the van. She opened her curtain to show the big willow we were parked under thrashing around wildly. I know Willow is very flexible but when a large branch is moving by meters with each gust it's time to get out of there!

We moved our van to a spot further away from all the trees and tried to get back to sleep. I say tried because the van was being blown around so much by each gust within gust that it actually felt like it was moving a little each time.

Eventually I must have dozed as I was awoken by a loud crack and the sound of a tree falling. It was light by now but the storm was still raging. We opened the rear curtains in time to see another tree about 30 meters in height, bend then crack and crash to the ground blocking the only exit from the riverside site.

We spent a while laying there watching the world gradually get torn apart around us, before joining a group of onlookers outside. Luckily nobody had been hurt overnight although a family had a close call when 2 trees crashed down within a meter of their tent. Luckily they'd decided decided to get out into their car back on the track after seeing the cavalcade of camper vans leaving the tree covered area that we'd started.

Eventually a council rescue party got through to us with the news the army would be coming to cut us out at about midday when the winds were forecast to die down. There were still a couple more trees that looked likely to fall across the road in the same place so they'd have to wait till it was safe.

Luckily we were within walking distance of Huka falls so the day was saved! We strapped on our shoes and had a very exciting walk along blocked roads, having to climb through fallen trees (avoiding any cables attached to the telegraph poles they'd pulled down with them).

We eventually got to Huka falls which was pretty impressive, as a 30 meter fast flowing river gets compressed into a 5 meter wide channel between hard rocks for about 100 meters before shooting over a 5 meter drop. Awesomely powerful!

We'd enjoyed playing dodge the falling trees and branches so much we decided to carry on over on the other side of the river, looping back towards town and something marked on the map as a hot pool.

Much climbing over and through fallen trees later we came to a little stream entering the river that was indeed hot! Following it up a little way was a semi-secluded pool that looked so tempting we couldn't resist despite the lack of swimwear & the popularity of the path. I figured there probably weren't many other people who enjoyed climbing through trees and dodging branches like us, so we were probably quite safe today?

There was a powerful little waterfall into the gravel bottomed pool so it was an interesting combination of both hot tub and all over exfoliation - great fun! :)

My hunch was right as we weren't disturbed and eventually continued our walk back to the van via Taupo (whose power had been cut off by many trees falling on power lines). The army had done their job as the trees (4 of them in the end) had been cleared and our van & one other were the only ones left in the now closed site on the now closed road.

All we needed to do was a short drive to Rotarua but with so many roads closed it took a little longer than expected. All in all a very eventful rest day and probably one of my favourites!