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On arrival to Taupo we had a little difficulty in locating our hostel on account of not being entirely sure on what street our hostel was actually located, being fairly sure it was on a road that began with a K. After driving down a number of roads beginning with a K and being no closer to finding our hostel we parked, got out the car, went to Base and went on the internet to look it up. Turned out it was like 500m away. Whilst we were on the internet Lucy printed out her skydiving receipt (just in case they asked for it) and checked some emails. Now knowing the location of our hostel or flashpackers as they referred to it we were able to check in, albeit it a little later than we had intended. And settled into our dorm room. We tried a few bars and restaurants for food, but they were all the midst of closing or already closed at 9pm so Burger King it was! We returned to Base and went to their Element Bar for a number of drinks on offer. The bar, by Base standards, was pretty nice, long, a lot of bar space, comfortable leather sofas, big cushions - it was nice. We headed back to the hostel around 11pm and tucked ourselves into bed where I began to taunt Lucy about her upcoming death by skydive.
Lucy was up early the next morning to be picked up by the skydiving people, whilst I slept in til 10, showered straightened my hair, generally beautified, but Lucy came back around 11am as her skydive had been cancelled on account of the weather - bummer. We went to an Irish Pub in town for lunch and Lucy managed to swindle herself a free drink since her skydive had been cancelled. She left around 2pm to try again, but was back an hour later having been cancelled again.
So with the afternoon free to do what we wanted we decided to head up to Huka Falls, an 11m tall waterfall that drains Lake Taupo from the Waikato River. It was certainly a powerful waterfall (and it releases some 220,000 litres of water every second) but after Iguassu Falls, we were left a little unimpressed.
We then headed to the Dam and left almost immediately expecting something grand like the Hoover dam in the US and finding something more akin to that constructed by a beaver.
Our last sight was "The Craters of the Moon" Geothermal Site, a steamfield of 36 hectares consisting of, obviously, craters, blowholes and mudpools named for its almost alien appearance. Randomly we ran into the group of 3 boys from the Waitomo Caves tubing who had apparently been following us for the majority of the drive from the caves to Taupo.
We then decided to visit a highly recommended thermal pool in Taupo with little else to entertain us for the night. The water is HOT. We went into the hottest pool first and I think we both made it about 10 minutes before having to get out and move to a slightly cooler pool for 5 minutes or so before attempting to re-enter the thing. Lucy, the crazy woman was swimming underwater in the pool, despite warnings not to do so. There was a gameshow on a TV that kept us amused for a while.
Back in town we went to Pak and Save and picked up some necessities along with some food and other groceries and went and made ourselves a (Petey) "bake." It was good, but not of Newcastle standards.
The next morning Lucy left for her final attempt at the skydive, whilst I had a day of internet use planned. Before I would even make it out of the hostel, however, I would be confronted with possibly the hairiest guy I have ever seen in my life parading around the toilets naked as the day he was born, not even a little embarrassed by my arrival. I can only assume he swallowed some hair as a child and it has been growing and attempting to escape his body ever since because it was EVERYWHERE.
I walked to Global Gossip at Base and did some productive and non productive things on the internet, before leaving and missing Lucy by what must have been minutes. She found me shortly after, we packed up our s*** into the car, got out the map, ensured we had the address properly written down this time and headed for the capital - Wellington.
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