Lake Taupo is the biggest lake of New Zealand. Taupo has the first commercial Skydiving provider New Zealand’s. There is the highest Bungy Jump of New Zealand. Taupo has volcanic hot springs, is location of one of the best scenes in “The Hobbit” trilogy and is only some km apart from the Tongariro National Park. Beside all this positive superlatives, we unfortunately have to mention a negative one as well. We had our very worst host since we started travelling (and we really hope it won’t get worse), but one thing after the other.
Before we arrived in Taupo, we had a quite unusual situation, as four hosts accepted our request, why we had to choose. We decided to go to Paul and Liz, originally from England due to some reasons. First, they travelled by themselves why there should be a lot of to talk about. Second, Liz breeds dogs (Ridgebacks) and therefore had the house full of dogs (11 of them). Third, their profile looked very good especially because they offered flexible working hours which was essential for us to do the Tongariro Crossing (a 6-8h hike) and they had a lot of very good references. Actually everything began quite well and Liz welcomed us at her kennel, where she takes care of dogs whose owners are on holiday and walked with us to the house. We have to mention that they own a quite pretty farm land a bit outside of Taupo. Once she showed us where we would sleep we got a bit disappointed. She told us before that we would sleep outside the house, which wouldn’t have been a problem at all, but that it would be a container with only provisory sanitary wasn’t in our minds (e.g. the toilet was just in the middle of the room without any kind of room separation…) Anyway, we should only sleep there so it should be fine, we thought… Shortly after that she told us that they didn’t want us to have breakfast with them and we should have our own in the container (that is to say without a table) because we would just bother them in the house in the morning. Not very nice, but ok…
After this quite disappointing introduction we were allowed to come with her in the house and got introduced to Lisa – the German Au-Pair from Stuttgart – who already started cooking dinner. The dinner, were we also got to know Paul, was apparently quite happy and we reconciled us a bit with the situation. Before Paul and Liz went to bed and Liz gave us a bag with supplements for our breakfast, we got another punch in the face. It was filled with the cheapest bred, cheapest corn-flakes, the cheapest marmalade and a bottle of milk. As we already saw their selection of muesli in the cupboard that was really annoying and we felt just used as cheap labourer. We soon went to – that is to say freezing cold, because Paul said there was no spare gas bottle for the heating – container just to realize that there was neither Wifi nor mobile reception in it, why we couldn’t do anything productive in the container…
You might have recognized that our first impression was not very good, why we seriously thought about calling one of the other hosts and leaving the next morning if one would accept. The main reason not to do that was probably that we wanted to give them a second chance and just got along very well with Lisa. We just should have done it… So we started working, which was planting 100 trees and was apparently quite funny (mainly because we could drive around with a quad). Liz made lunch and we had a very nice chat with her, which made us feel much better for the moment. In the afternoon, we visited some highlights of Taupo, e.g. the Huka Falls (which are supposed to be one of the Top 5 waterfalls of New Zealand referring to some internet voting, but we weren’t very impressed) and a honey tasting. We also visited the dam which is the movie location for “The Hobbit” where the dwarfs “surf” the river in the barrels (we even watched the flooding of the small gorge a second time from a better point of view, just because it was so cool). The dam gets opened 3-4 times every day transforming the little gorge into a powerful stream. Later we had delicious tea (for those of you who are not familiar with the British, that’s what they call dinner) and we again had a good chat with all in the house. However, this day we made a problematic mistake. After Lisa went to bed we stayed for another 30 minutes in the house, just to use wifi and look for some hosts in Coromandel. We don’t know if they saw on the surveillance cameras (no joke they had heaps of them) or if they just heard us. Anyway, the next day we were asked to leave the house after Lisa went to bed. HOW PARANOID IS THAT??? They gave as another reason to be annoyed of them every single day…
The next day we worked full (with a small interruption to do the “craters of the moon walk”, which almost led to an dispute in the afternoon :-/ ) in order to get the day off for the Tongariro Crossing. The next day we worked half day and drove to Napier in the afternoon. Napier is a city which is built in “Art Deco” style which is actually quite impressive. The very next day we drove to the Tongariro Crossing, or for those who don’t know the name, crossing Mordor!!!
That was actually the most positive extreme of these five days, and maybe the best thing we did in New Zealand so far. The Tongariro Alpine Crossing, which is said to be the best one-day walk of New Zealand and one of the most beautiful in the world for a good reason. Depending on your speed, route and mood, you walk on, over and between active volcanos for 6-10 hours. We chose the perfect day to do so, which is actually quite difficult as these mountains more or less create the climate of Taupo and clouds can appear within minutes (as we already experienced in Taranaki). The day before should have been fine as well, but luckily we found a Spanish guy we could share the driving with (the crossing is one-way and you need either one car at each end or book an expensive shuttle) and fortunately did the track on Friday. We had perfect weather for the whole track over the volcanos (the three main ones are Mt. Tongariro, Mt Ruapehu, Mt Ngauruhoe) and were able to take amazing pictures of the mountains and the lakes (Emerald Lakes and Blue Lake). Beside the one Spanish (from Barcelona), there was another Catalan couple walking with us. It was super funny to be five people and one of them was even a professional photographer (and therefore tramped with TWO heavy cameras), but hopefully we’ll receive some professional pictures of him 🙂 As already mentioned, this area is the movie location for Mordor in “The Lord of the Rings”. Exceptionally famous is the volcano with two names. The Maori name which is almost impossible to pronounce correctly (Mt. Ngauruhoe) and that’s why most Kiwis just call it Mt. Doom. Just have a look on the pictures and enjoy! 🙂
Somehow reconciled with Taupo, we slept the last night in our container (this night we even got a heater) and made our way to Rotorua the next day after having an English breakfast!