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When heading into the Taupo Region the weather changed dramatically.. it was peeing down. But further towards Taupo it eventually stopped. We had decided on stopping at a family parks because we got 2 nights for the price of 1. Bargain. Only when we had checked in we drove into Taupo town to the i site to find we could free camp literally in front of Lake Taupo on a car park. Which is why we decided to stop a 3rd night in Taupo because it was free.
Anyways back to our first day. We walked to Huka Falls alongside the river, the walk was about 1hr. But boy was it worth it when we got there. Huka Falls has about 200,000 litres of water plunging nine metres over the great rock face every second... thats enough to fill five olympic swimming pools every minute. Crazy but very impressive!!
The next morning we had a massive debate whether or not to go and book a skydive over Lake Taupo as the weather was a little iffy. After breakfast we went for it, heading to the i site to see if we could get on one for that morning. 10.30am we were on our way to the 'airport' and the weather looking really good. For some strange reason Lucy remained fairly calm about the situation, where as Peter was a little nervous. Once getting to the airport we checked in and got a short briefing on what was going to happen. Then it was time to get harnessed up ready to meet our diving partners. We were in the second group to go up so we had to wait around whilst the first group got ready and went up in the plane. We waited and waited watching for them to come down but then after about 20 minutes they radio'd down to say the weather wasn't good enough to jump. So we took a seat and waited patiently for the cloud to move on. We waited about an hour and everything seemed so rushed as they wanted to get our dive in whilst the skies were clear. So we quickly met our partners and ran to the plane. The plane was a little cramped and had Peter at the front with Lucy behind him. Yes thats right Peter was the first to jump 12'000ft out of the plane. On the way up we got told to relax and enjoy the views (which were amazing) until the door opened.. thats when reality hit!!!
Peter was gone into thin air but within seconds Lucy was edged forward to go aswell. No time to actually think what the heck we were doing. All we can say is it is such an amazing feeling free falling 200kph for 30-40 seconds, 12,000ft in the air. The views when the parachute gets pulled were amazing over Lake Taupo. Peter's dive partner was called Brad Rock from South Africa and Lucy's were called Elad Berger from Israel. Once landing we watched our video and looked at about 120 photos that had been taken of us.. very pleased!!
A well earned dinner was then in order after the skydive, soup.. haha... before heading back into town to attempt Lake Taupo's hole in one challenge. The prize was $10,000... and you guessed it we didnt win it. But apparently they average a winner every 2 weeks. Across the road from the Lake there was a mini golf, so we decided to have a little game before heading back to the campsite. Peter won yet again.. Lucy's not very good at golf. That night we watched the All Blacks beat Ireland in the steinlager series match.
The morning after it was time to leave the caravan park and go to freedom camp in town. But before then we visited craters of the moon. Which is where there are boiling mud pools and steam coming from the ground all over. Proper Crazy!!! This will be explained more in our Rotorua blog as it is well known there. The same afternoon we visited the Aratiatia Dam which gets released 3 times a day.
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