Day 165 - Lake Taupo & around, North Island - Thursday 29th March 2012

After all the excitement of "the Super Loo" the night before, we finally arose from a good night's sleep to the sun rising over Lake Taupo; not a bad view for two unemployed bums from Stoneleigh! Anyway whilst eating our breakfast of muesli with yogurt and blueberries - that we bought from a local farm, Soph was doing her "lonely Planet" bit and telling me all about the interesting things about Lake Taupo - did you all know, for example, that Lake Taupo is the same size as Singapore?! Me neither! The view from the camper was fantastic, boats we sailing by us and people were out walking and laughing - it really was a perfect start to the day. At about 1pm we drove our deluxe, super doper, luxury white van man campervan to the start of Huka Falls. Here is where we started our two hour walk through some forest and out to the mouth of the Huka waterfall. On route we passed some natural hot springs which a few people were starting to enter, we thought we would try it after the waterfall. The Huka Falls certainly didn't disappoint and neither did the walk down there. The views were awesome, the river water was so clear that in some places, it's about 15 metres deep, and you could still see the bottom perfectly. The actual waterfalls itself were indescribable and one of the best we have seen so far in NZ. After half an hour looking at the falls we made our way back. On the way back we stopped at the natural hot springs, and there were a few people lying in the pools of water, I thought it was strange as, although it was sunny, it was still a pretty cold. Whilst I was contemplating if it would actually be warm Soph already had her kit off (she had a bikini underneath - we're not perverts!!) and was in. Not to be outdone, I did my Baywatch bit and jumped in too!! It was boiling! We stayed in there for well over an hour - amazing! The water is from a natural geyser which has its water volcanically heated and then joins some stream water; this cools it and makes it a lovely 38 degrees - perfect for a hot bath in the cool sun!! After we had dried our prune like bodies we headed to the library to charge our laptop and try and use their free WI-FI. We were in a Library in Taupo in the middle of NZ and out the corner of my eye I spotted the book "Good Guys Wear Black" which features my dad - weird hey! Before we knew it we had been in the library for about two hours (I think my parents would note that's the longest I ever spent in a library!!) and came outside to see a parking ticket on our super camper!! The ticket was only $12 but we still could have got two coffees and a cake for that in one of the local cafes! Reluctantly, we took a short drive to the council office and paid our ticket. Now we had to find somewhere to sleep, so we headed back to where we were the night before and got the exact same spot - Pesto pasta for dinner then bed - boom!!