Lake Taupo

We arrived at our hotel at Taupo at night-time, so had no idea what the are consisted of. We were one street back from the lake with a view of it, and the next morning were just amazed at what there was in front of us.

The Lake is HUUUUUGE!! 193 kilometres around the circumference, and so cold! We went to the ski hire shop to get some jackets and toboggans for the snow and it was 4 degrees... yet the locals don't feel it.

The guy serving us in the ski shop had t-shirt and jeans on... and a beanie. I have a new love and respect for beanie wearers here, and have bought a fair share of them already :)

We stopped at a couple of spots around the lake to see it and all jumped out of the car for a look.

Jono of course had to get as close to the water as possible... no he didn't fall in. (Thank goodness)

We also found pumice stones, heaps of them. Every beach on the edge of the lake has them, from the volcanic explosion that started the lake.

Lake Taupo is also full of Trout! Placed into the lake from settlers and the trout loved it, and grew. It was not unusual for people to bring home a catch of of 20-30 fish or more in a day.

These days there are lots of extreme activities around the lake, bungy, rapids, jetboats as well as just interesting ones - there was a golf platform near our hotel, and the aim was to tee off and get a hole-in-one on the floating platform water. There's also lots of picnic spots, but I think in winter it's too cold to make use of them .

There was also seagull in the middle of the lake... we are a fair way inland silly seagull, he looked at home and I'm sure had plenty of food.

It was an amazing sight on the way to the snow for the day.