April 17 - 19

After leaving the not so exciting town of Napier, this time on a gloriously sunny day, we headed for Taupo. Taupo is located on the largest lake in NZ - Lake Taupo. It is also in the geothermal region of NZ and once again home to many adventure sports. We weren't sure what to expect of Taupo, all we knew was that we wanted to do a skydive. At this point however, Sean was having doubts as had been thinking it so much. The tables had very much turned since Queenstown as I hadn't thought about the realities of jumping out a plane too much and was just excited about the thought.

It wasn't a long drive, so on arrival I thought it was best if we enquired about skydiving straight away rather than giving ourselves time to think about it, which may end up in us developing more fear. It was a nice day but a bit windy and the clouds were coming in, but despite this the companies were still jumping. After lunch we headed out to the airport and watched a couple of skydiving videos, signed a form and were told we were ready to jump! Pretty simple! Unfortunately we then had to wait another two hours before we were suited up as so many other people were jumping before us. We sat avidly watching the plane taking off and parachutes falling out of the sky, every person that landed had a huge grin on their face so we knew we were in for a good time.

The wait of two hours did nothing but increase our fear and worry if the weather would be ok as the temperature was dropping and the clouds increasing. Strangely Sean was still more scared than me but then we got called to put our jump suits on and we said what could have been our last few words to each other! Sean asked if I wanted to say a few words for the camera but I though it best not too! Everyone started to meet their jumpmaster (the man they would be jumping with) but mine was still in the sky with another jumper. Eventually I met him, but he was busy eating chocolate and didn't even tell me what would happen when we jumped! This itself scared me a bit!

We eventually crammed into the little plane - 14 of us including the pilot and started the ascent to 12,000 ft which took about twenty minutes. Throughout this time my jumpmaster and another decided to wind me up by saying my harness was too big, too loose and jumping could be risky so maybe we should go back down, although we'd probably be ok. I wasn't impressed with this and found myself slapping his leg - probably not wise when he was in charge of my life. I felt the plane leveling out and all of a sudden my knees/legs began shaking uncontrollably with fear. The door then opened and all I could think was "what the f*** am I doing?", but within seconds we were the second the jump and the first two/three seconds were scary as your stomach has the falling feeling, but after that you reach terminal velocity and it is the most amazing feeling. It's so difficult to describe, but you are falling around 200km/ph with the wind against your face (this would have made for some amusing pictures), amazing scenery and not a care in the world! AWESOME! Time literally flew by and the parachute was open and we were slowly descending the rest of the way. This was the time to sit back and take it all in, but they do spin you around a lot which does make you feel a bit sick!

On landing I was high on adrenaline and also suprised to see that Sean had landed first even though he jumped after me! We both had a huge grin on our faces and wanted to go again without the spinning part of it. It really is amazing and we'd recommend it to everyone. Maybe one day we'll get to do it again, maybe higher up though!

Unfortunately after this, I was left with a banging headache as is often the case with me once I get an adrenalin rush (I guess it's the come down) and we were both feeling sick from the spinning so spent the evening watching TV and relaxing!

The next day we'd been hoping to go to the Tongariro National Park and see the volcanoes but unfortunately due to high winds and snowfall we were unable to do the 7-8 hour walk over the crossing. So instead of this we just took a drive out to the park and had a look at the volcanoes from ground level. It was really amazing to see, especially as they were snow covered and I imagine it would be a wonderful walk if the path is open.

We left Taupo on the Tuesday and went to the 'Craters of the Moon' 5km north of the town. This is one of the geothermal parks which has bubbling mud pools, craters and steaming rocks. It was interesting to see although we found it a little boring as we expected more from it. You did get an awesome view of Taupo and the volcanoes once you climbed the little hill though!

After this we took a quick look at the Huka Falls, and although they were not high waterfalls they were an amazing blue colour and had a lot of energy behind them! You wouldn't want to get caught in it that's for sure. We also took a look at Aratiatia Dam, but would have had to wait around another hour to see the water released for the rapids and we weren't interested enough to do that so headed onto Rotorua instead!