Taupo and Huka Falls

We were given a lift by the manager of Kiwi Paka (the one who lived in Swansea) to the bus station, which was really nice and saved us a walk, and then our bus to Taupo only took one hour so we arrived at around 10:00. The only thing was we arrived before check-in time so we killed some time by taking a walk to the lake front (Lake Taupo is the largest freshwater lake in the Southern Hemisphere) which was really nice, the water so blue and clear. We stopped off at a supermarket on the way back to the hostel to pick up some food for the next few days.

After checking in we had lunch and then started a walk towards Huka Falls, which was located around 3km from our hostel. We walked passed Bungee Taupo – I never thought a bungee jump would look so inviting, but due to the colour of the water below and the cliffs around it looked like a lot of fun – and carried on into Spa Park, a lovely park that led you onto a walking track to Huka Falls.

At the beginning of the walk there was a hot springs which we dipped our feet into – very hot – before carrying on with our walk. We made a few stops to take pictures (and to dip my face into the Waikato River – I couldn’t help it, it looked so refreshing and inviting). The walk to Huka Falls took us around an hour and a half, during which time we passed some incredible view points and had a nice walk in the sunshine.

Huka Falls itself is quite a sight. The colours of the water as it foamed up at the bottom of the Falls was pretty incredible. The whole river looked so clean and pure, no brown water, no gunk at the sides, no litter floating through it; in short, what a river should look like. It was really nice and the photos do it better justice than my words.

On the way back from Huka Falls we were pretty hot and sweaty due to walking in the sun for quite some time so we decided to stop off and dip our feet in the river; no sooner had we done this than we decided to go all out and just dive in. It was cold, refreshing and great fun. After our dip in the river we even stopped off in the hot springs, which was an unusual sensation because the hot springs ran into the river so that you could be sitting down and your left side would feel cold (due to the cool river water) and your right side would feel scalding hot (due to the hot springs). It was bizarre but really relaxing and we had to drag ourselves out of there to go back for dinner.

On the way back however, I spotted a flying zip line ride which I obviously had to have a go on. Nicola saw how much fun I was having and naturally she joined in too. I also had a quick go on some monkey bars for good measure – I can still do them by the way!