Lake Taupo
Our first night on Lake Taupo was on a secluded bay and the calm lake was within feet of our campervan. We enjoyed a stunning sunset over the lake as we had our dinner and popped open a nice bottle of sparkling (one from the Marlborough stock). It was truly beautiful and exactly what we needed after our long, hard climb across the Tongariro Crossing.
Lake Taupo is quite a touristy place and there's an endless list of activities you can try out from white-water rafting to skydiving, and amongst such a variety of quality, high-adrenalin activities we chose to try our hand at prawn fishing. Yes, you've read that right - we went to catch some prawns at Huka Prawn Park! :-)
The water within the large ponds containing all the lovely juicy prawns are heated to tropical temperatures using the local geo-thermal hot springs, meaning they grow nice and big and taste yummy! After a quick a lesson in prawn trivia - did you know each prawn can father 32 million young in a two year period? - we were handed our rods and a little cup of meat (ox's heart to be exact) and were sent out to the ponds to catch our lunch.
Basically you put the meat on your hook and dangle it into the pond. The carnivorous (and occasionally cannibalistic) prawn grabs and drags the meat across the bottom. You can definitely feel the tug on your rod and you have to walk with your prawn until it feels it's safe enough to eat. It was strange seeing perfectly sane people get all excited and extend their cane to take their prawn for a walk around the ponds. What's suppose to happen at this time is that you wait while the prawn eats the meat and gets hooked on your rod. Easy. Unfortunately, this was very rare and most often you would pull your rod out with an empty hook. Quite often the tiny fish in the pond managed to eat the meat before it even gets a chance to reach the bottom. Also the prawns are not stupid. They've most likely watched their friends and family enjoy a nice ox heart dinner just before violently getting pulled out of the ponds and if they've managed to stay alive this long, it is because they have learnt how to eat around the hook and not get caught.
Two hours into our challenge, Mark had somehow managed to coerce 3 reasonably sized prawns to clamber onto his hook and I had nothing at all. Being fairly competitive, I was now really frustrated and was about to break my bamboo fishing cane in half when they called out that we had 10 minutes before the park would close. Grrr! I attached a last piece of meat on my hook and threw it in for the final time and pulled out a smallish grey prawn. Yeah! Get in! I just needed another 12 hours to get the rest of my lunch. We took our catch to the restaurant and they steam cooked it for us and luckily we could also purchase other prawn dishes to supplement what would otherwise have been a very small lunch. The food was yummy but later I figured out that those 4 little prawns were the most expensive we'd ever eaten as they worked out at £8 a pop.
Later we headed off to the natural hot springs in the local park. Very hot water from the springs runs into the freezing cold river here, and where the two meet, creates a lovely warm water perfect for a dip. The park even had a pump track for Mark to test out his skills on his new Specialized mountain bike. He quickly made friends with the only other user of the track, a 13 year old boy, and they were in their element charging around and trying the small jumps.
Next day we went in search of Craters of the Moon walking track, an easy 45 minute walk through the active geothermal area. The pocking landscape is full of steam vents and bubbling mud pools and feels very alien, hence the name. This area is certainly full of natural wonders and just round the corner was the Huka Falls, which are by no means the biggest or the longest waterfalls we've seen, but certainly very impressive. The sheer volume of the crystal clear water that passes through a small chasm is enough to fill 5 olympic pools every minute and the Waikato river along the way powers many hydroelectric stations. New Zealand certainly has so much to offer but with so few days left we felt we had to move on.
