Mother's Day

Mother's day this year was a bit different for me mostly because my Dad was here too. Usually I take Mum out for a meal, cook something or I buy her a bunch of little gifts so that it's like a mini christmas. This year though I decided that we should go away for the weekend, Dad included, to Taupo which is known for it's thermal waters.

Taupo is only about 2-3 hours away from where we live, depending on fast you drive and how many stops you make so we set aside the whole day to get there knowing that we could do the tourist things along the way. Our first stop was actually on the side of the road where there was some driftwood art in the shape of a kiwi which I thought was not only amazing in it's own right but also well placed because along the way there were road signs warning about kiwis. We passed the main mountains of the north island on the way and although Ruapehu didn't have a lot of snow it still looked lovely. For those of you who don't know, Mount Ruapehu is actually used as the filming location for Mt Doom in Lord of the Rings. 

 

Our first main stop though was a little thermal town half way to Taupo where we stopped to have a bathe in a thermal pool. We also had a look around their thermal forest (which was free) where there are natural hot pools and bubbling mud areas. Me and Dad couldn't resist hopping the fence for a better look even though there are danger signs. We will get caught out one day but until then we will keep bending the rules. The water was so hot there that the local people use it for cooking, they put baskets of food into the water to boil or build wooden platforms over the vents to steam. I would have loved to give it a try but we didn't have any food with us that could be cooked!  

 

On the way past Lake Taupo, which is the largest lake in New Zealand, I managed to get stuck behind some slow traffic so I pulled into on of the rest areas and it just happened to have a family of black swans and an awesome crop of mushrooms.

The main highlight of the trip was the Wai-O-Tapu thermal area which we stumbled across while looking for another thermal swimming pool which we knew was somewhere on the outskirts of Taupo. Along the Wai-O-Tapu road was the most amazing boiling mud lake I've seen and I took so many pics and videos of it that I have more than I know what to do with. Unfortunately out of the 200nodd pics I took only about 4 are decent and even then they aren't anywhere near as impressive as the actual thing. Mostly I think the noise is the most fascinating and with out that it really is just mud!

Further along the road we saw a sign for a geyser but when we got to the end of the road it turned out that you had to pay to go in to see and being the cheap skates that we are we didn't want to pay, especially because we had been told they put chemicals into the geyser to make it perform at certain times of day which didn't seem right to us. There's no point going to see a natural wonder if it's not natural after all. Feeling a bit disappointed we carried on down the road until we saw some more steam and pulled over to have a look. Turns out we had found a thermal stream where the temperature was low enough to bathe. It was a balmy 38c we reckon which was lovely and hot but not burning. After a hasty road side change into our bathing suits we got into the water and really enjoyed the atmosphere and the fact that once again we had found something so amazing for free! The pools that we had been aiming for would have cost us $15 each and are usually quite busy. Bathing in the stream was not only nicer on our pockets it felt far more special knowing that the water was pure thermal, no temperature control or ph checks, no infrastructure, just the trees and the bird song. It was truly magical. 

 

After our bathe and slightly awkward change back into clothes between the doors of the car we decided to go and have another look at the geyser area. This time when we got there the gates were open so we wandered down and had a look at what all the fuss was about. It was actually amazing in it's natural state and although it wasn't consistent it was still rather impressive which made us wonder if they really needed to put chemicals in to impress the tourists. Again we took far too many photos and even played the camera settings to get a group shot of us. We had the place to ourselves as the sign had been removed from the end of the road which made us feel dodgy about the company that runs the area, almost like they didn't want people to know it was there unless you were going to the paid show. They had a whole area fenced further down the road that you could pay to go into but it cost $32 a person and from the look of the brochure had nothing more amazing that what we had already seen for free, so needless to say we didn't go into the complex.

It was an amazing weekend in so many ways and the fact that we managed to do so much without destroying our wallets really made it all the better!