Saturday, 8 February 2014

Day 35 – Taupo Rain & Spa Thermal Park.

Yesterday I went to the tourist information centre and grabbed some leaflets on what to do in Taupo. One of them I saw was for a market that is held on the green on a Saturday morning and as that is only over the road from where I’m staying I thought I’d check it out. As I got closer I noticed it wasn’t on because Lynyrd Skynyrd, 10CC and some other bands were having a mini festival.


I decided just to walk around some more and pop into Pak and Save for a few things; Timtams and stuff… the necessities. When I came out there was a slight drizzle in the air so I grabbed a pie for lunch (Butter chicken, bloody lovely!) and made my way to the library to do some research for other places I’ll be visiting. Chrissy told me yesterday she’s going to join me for the last 5 weeks I’m away, so Vietnam to Thailand, which I’m very excited about now!! Another reason I wanted to create a rough plan so I can tell her my ideas and whether there are any other places or things she wants to see and do.


The lake above is called Lake Taupo and is the largest lake in Australasia, it is 616 square kilometres and you could fit the whole of Singapore into it!
I walked out the library to go and meet some of the girls and it was absolutely hammering it down! I feel your pain back in the UK. We didn’t end up doing a lot just chilling in reception, watching one of their Bungy videos.
It cleared up quite a bit and the sun came out and one of them said she was going to the hot pools in the Spa Thermal Park which is about a 40min walk from our hostel so I decided to join her, as I wanted to go and see them anyway!



They were really cool and it’s surprising how hot the water actually is. We chilled in the hot spring for about 45mins and at one point it started to chuck it down. It was a weird sensation as the rain was cold hitting you but the water was super warm, it created this weird steam mist making it really hard to see. Within 5minutes the rain had stopped and the view cleared up.


We made our way back to the hostel and I was excited to have my leftover curry! Unfortunately for me it wasn’t that simple. The microwave rotated your food and the light was hot but it didn’t actually heat up your food, I tried to grill the naan so it was warm and that didn’t work either… I then thought there is only one thing but to bung it in a pan and heat it that way. The gas has to be lit using a match or something but all of those in the kitchen were broken, so I had to find someone with a lighter to do it for me, you wouldn’t think reheating something could be so hard?! Bits were hot, bits were cold but it was alright.

Finally I was ready to meet everyone else, we hung around in the girls room for a bit watching some sky dive videos as 3 of them got to do it yesterday and then we went to check out the Element bar that is linked to our hostel.

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