I’d heard that Lake Taupo (the lake and area) was special and not to be missed so made that our final destination in New Zealand. We had a relaxed breakfast at the hotel, finished packing and set out on our hour plus trip with the idea in mind of seeing Huka Falls which had been recommended to us. We’d check into the next hotel later.

As we headed to Taupo we saw the huge Te Mihi Geothermal Power Plant nearby and diverted off to see more. There’s a viewing platform and we could also look down the hillside to see supporting pipes and stream far below.

Huka falls is fed by the calm Waikato river that is squeezed into a narrow gorge and becomes a roaring torrent of water through the gorge until it falls back into the open river bed. Some people mentioned it reminded them of Niagara Falls – I say its special but is nothing like Niagara.

We parked and walked down a long wooded path (knowing we’d need to walk up later-ugh!) The falls were impressively roaring but we wanted to see the gorge. A little more walking got us to a bridge with great views. Later we walked along the river for about an hour just looking around and enjoying the area.

We were told that a valley-sponsored attraction, “Craters of the Moon” was worth seeing so we headed there after lunch. It was an amazing site – What looks like a very large, flat field (about 100 acres) that could be used to growing things is actual full of thermal steam vents randomly showing up here and there. Some vents were in older collapsed craters that showed stream coming out their sides. Others were just small holes in the ground with hot steam coming out.

We had to stay on the boardwalks of course but I was surprised to see how close some hot steam holes were to where we were walking. (Maybe New Zealanders aren’t as nervous about a little danger.) Note that the white you see above the green or in the craters is steam.

We finally headed to our “resort”, rested and/or swam and then finally went to the very large and beautiful Lake Taupo for dinner.

We’ve had Vietnamese dinners the last three nights – Dirk has Pho Beef every time to enjoy the variations and I was lucky that two out of three had vegetable Pho.