After 4 nights in Rotorua we headed to Taupo with our latest bus driver, Cuddles. We passed on the geyser tour in the morning as we'd had enough of the smell of rotten eggs and didn't want to pay to walk round in the rain with a peg on our nose. The weather was frustrating though as we couldnt do a couple of the planned walks en route to Taupo due to the torrential rain. We did stop at Huka Falls though just outside of Taupo to walk around the top of the waterfalls which was pretty cool.
The main attraction of Taupo was to spend a day doing the Tongoriro Alpine Crossing - the best hiking in NZ apparently, taking in Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings on the way - so when it was cancelled for two days due to bad weather and dangerous conditions we decided to stay an extra couple of nights in the hope that the weather would pick up. Unfortunately it didn't but two members of our Team Doom, Tim & Vicky, got up at 5am anyway and did it regardless!! We regretted not doing it too but as we were staying across town there was no one to motivate us to get up and go. We'll definitely be back to do that in the not-too-distant future!!
Taupo was fun though - we had a couple of good nights out - one at Base Bar (standard) and one across the road mingling with some strange locals! A few of the others did skydives over the lake too and we all spent an afternoon at some natural thermal spas in a national park, where you could stand under a waterfall the temperature of a nice hot bath.
We were still enjoying ourselves but the worsening weather was starting to disrupt our plans and activities, and with spending longer than initially planned in a few places we decided to get to Oz sooner rather than later. So after our latest soaking on the way back from Pak N Save (the best supermarket in the world), we booked our flight to Cairns. Australia in one week!!