Taupo

On Friday, we arrived in Taupo and checked into out luxurious and spacious cabin, ready to celebrate the arrival of 2011 in style. We were certainly glad to be out of our increasingly claustrophic van.

We had been planning to go into town, where we were told we would find a free concert. Rather annoyingly, we never made it; falling asleep for a short kip, we were awoken a few hours later by the New Year fireworks. Annoyed at having been woken from my slumber, I rolled over and went back to sleep.

On New Year's day, we decided that we had better make the most of Taupo so we drove to Hot Water Beach, an area of the lakefront where geothermal springs belch out hot water into the lake. I went for a quick swim and discovered a number of things.

Firstly, the lake is actually pretty cold. There were a few patches where the lake bed was slightly warm and one rather hot stream flowing into the lake a little further down which had already been monopolised by a group of kids. Other than that, it was a struggle to stay warm.

Secondly, we were sharing the lake with the local ducks and swans. I found feeding the ducks to be a lot more fun than swimming with them:



The swans round here were black and looked rather fearsome:



Here is a picture of a family of ducks that like to say quack:



After we'd had our fill of lake+ducks fun, we headed into the town for lunch. It was nice enough, in a "heavily touristed" way. We discovered one shop which, I'm pretty certain, was being slightly economical with the truth:



Now, I don't know about you, but I take "World Champtions" to be predicated on winning the world cup, which the All Blacks haven't done for, ooh, 23 years. Surely they meant to say "All Blacks: Champions Of The World (1987)".