Our stay in Taupo was brief, but interesting, none the less.

We learned a little about Lake Taupo and the history, The area we drove through yesterday, called the 'Desert Road' well it's just the main road which goes through the Central Plateau. It's not baron, and is not flat!! It's got three ACTIVE volcanoes, Mt Tongariro, Mt Ruapehu and Mt Ngauruhoe. It was really impressive seeing the volcanoes up close, but I'm glad we only found out today that they are still active, otherwise I may have chosen a different route!

During this journey, we did have the delight of seeing a huge bird feasting on some road kill, we had to slam on the breaks to miss it, and only when we were inches away, it decided to leave its dinner and get out of our way! The bird was massive - it was quite possibly, as big as a small child!! It was feasting on what looked like a racoon, not sure whether they exist here in NZ, but it was either that or a Kiwi Drop bear!! Suppose id prefer to see this over the abundance of scruffy hitchhikers on the side of every road!! It is obviously not illegal to hitchhike here, but I refuse to carry any additional passengers!

Anyway, back to the facts - Lake Taupo is the largest lake in New Zealand, being 606 Sq KM, it is a water filled crater, and is the legacy of a volcanic blast that shattered the island and shook up the world more than 26,500 years ago. Anyone remember....?

The whole area is still active, with Mt Ruapehu having regular bursts, the last blast being in 2007. And with the area being active brings me onto my next point........ The geothermal surfaces!

This is what makes Rotorua famous basically!! The Geothermal springs, exploding geysers, mud pools, and the sulphurous gas clouds which comes from the ground........... Well my point being, I thought this was just in the Rotorua area of the island, so checking into Lake Taupo for the night I thought we would be save from the tragic eggy smell that the sulphur brings... But I was wrong! As I got up during the night, I could not get back to sleep, due to the most horrendous stench coming through the windows, and any crevice the campervan has!! This didn't stop here, not until we actually got up and left Taupo!! For what seemed like hours we were driving through thick white fog..... It was in fact the sulphur just coming up through the ground!!

So this rotten egg smell covers the whole central part of the North Island!! Just behind our camp site were geysers so a quick look was enough to set us on our way, we chose then to miss out Rotorua on the trip, as we were only going to visit for the geysers and the springs... but the smell made our minds up, and we just hit the road!!!

The roads are much more populated, so better conditioned, and straighter! So we made distance in a good time. Before we knew it we were driving over the Auckland Harbour Bridge!!! So we decided to call it a day and we pulled in at the next camp site we could find, in a little town called Orewa Beach.