The next day we headed down to Taopo, but not before we visited a rabbit shearing shop! This was a random place. They've got German Angora rabbits that are quite sizeable bunnies with lots and lots of fur. they're so sloppy! They get sheared and their wool is sent off to be spun. In order for the bunnies to be sheared, they need to be stretched out so that all the wrinkles in their skin are removed so they don't get nicked with the razor. The rabbits couldnt care less when this is done to them, they look so lazy! But the lady doing it said they get sheared 4 times a year and they;re so used to having it done, they dont mind it at all, and they're much more active when all their fur's gone!
From their we headed into Taopo. I tried to sign up for a skydive that afternoon. I went out to the divesite and we signed all the forms and watched the videos, but it was too cloudy and windy, so it was cancelled for the day unfortunately. It was a shame, but I think now I may as well wait until the summer or until I'm in Oz as it will be a bit warmer, it would have been -18degrees when I jumped out of the plane - brr!
The next day I decided to go for a walk up to the Craters of the Moon geothermal reserve. It was quite a walk to get there, but a lovely one along the Waikato river and past Huka falls. It took me about 3 hours to get there, then an hour to look round the park and then the walk back but it was a good day. The scenery by the river was beautiful and it was a lovely sunny day. Being a geothermal reserve, I was again treated to the lovely rotton egg smell that comes with sulphur dioxide or whatever gas it is that comes out of mud pools and the like. But it was interesting and I got a good view of it all when I climbed a hill to overlook the park. That evening me and some nice people I met at the hostel all went out to Mulligans, the Irish pub, to go to quiz night. It was a good night but the quiz was so hard!
The next day was another lovely day and I went out on Lake Taopo for a couple of hours in the afternoon on a sail boat with a very stereotypical old sea dog called Bill, as the captain. He was great and had a big bushy beard, a bit like captian Birdseye. The lake was so flat and there was no wind so we didnt use the sails at all, just the motor on the boat! We went round to see some Maori carvings in the rock on the side of the lake. I think if I'd only gone to see this, I'd have been a bit disappointed as I was imagining the carvings to have been really old, but they were only done in the 70's... bit of a tourist attraction I think, but the lake itself was so pretty and it was so nice being on the water. Across the lake, you could see the Tongariro national park and the 3 main montains that live there, Tongariro, Ruapehu and Ng-something-or-other (the one that was Mt Doom in LOTR).
The next day we headed down past the lake into the Tongariro national park. Unfortunately, the cloud was down a bit more today so we didnt get to see the mountains up close which was a shame, but it was still sunny in places and we did a 2 hour walk around the park to a waterfall which was lovely and walking through forest and open land and by rivers, it was really nice. I think I saw an Orc print on my walk!
The next night we stayed in a place in the middle of knowwhere, half way between Lake Taopo and Wellington, at a lodge called the River Valley. This was a lovely place, nice and warm with a log fire and mulled wine for sale! The dorm rooms in the place were... interesting... they were described to us as the 'orgy room' as there are basically lots of mattresses all together and you just all sleep on them together. It wasn't that bad, everyone got an individual mattress and I got 4 to myself which I was happy with! I went on a lovely horseride in teh morning and it was such a beautiful day for one, not a cloud in the sky. There were only 3 of us in total on the treck so we went a bit further than groups usually go and we went up to get an amazing view of Mt Ruapehu in the distance, it was lovely. I started off on a white horse called Turk, but he was a bit lazy and wasn't paying much attention to my attempts to get him moving, so I switched to a massive horse called Honey instead.
The afternoon was taken up with the drive down to Wellington, stopping off at a town called 'Bulls' along the way. They went a bit overboard advertising the town using their name... the police station is called Consta-Bull, the Library, Read-a-Bull, and so on. We got to Wellington in the early evening and had a little walk to get to the hostel I'd booked, it wasnt' the nicest place in the world unfortunately, dirty and small, but it was only for a few days.
The next day, I got up early to go sightseeing round the Capital. I did quite a good job and saw the main sights in a day, I went into the Beehive which is the government building and had a tour, got to go into the speakers room where Parliament sits and where the PM sits etc etc. The security of the place is quite funny, they've only got enough funding to pay for security guards between about 8am and 6pm so you have to go through metal detectors and bag searches etc during those times, but the rest of the time, anyone can walk in!! Anyway, the tour took an hour or so, then I got a cable car up to the botanical gardens up a hill and walked back down into the city, went along the waterfront to Te Papa, the big museum there. There were lots of extra exhibitions on celebrating the Maori new year. One was a load of Maori tattoo artists in a room tattooing loads of people, I had a good look and had to show some restraint not to get one - some of the designs are so lovely! That evening was Wales vs all blacks so we went out to the pub to watch the game.
The next morning, I met up with Jane who I met in South America in Patagonia. It was nice to see her again and she took me to a few places I wouldnt have thought to go, or wouldnt have been able to without a car. We drove up Mt Victoria, but the cloud was completely down and we couldnt see a thing!! We headed round the bays and had a cup of coffee looking out onto the water which was really nice. Then we headed back into town for some lunch at a funky cafe and then went back into Te Papa for a bit as there's so much to see there. I had heard about a cool sounding bar called Alice's which is suppsed to be like Alice in wonderland and one end, the furniture is massive, the other end, its tiny. But it turned out it was a night club rather than a bar, so we couldnt go in. I'll have to keep it in mind if I go to wellngton again though, it sounds fun!
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