EC-Rider Travels

There were quite a few further tremors during the night including another big-one this morning but everyone is putting on a brave face and carrying on. Nina gave us the most amazing breakfast – these New Zealander really know how to make granola and I have to admit, Nina’s even rivalled Rachel’s!

Mum and I were booked on to a boat tour on Lake Taupō, though had unfortunately read the wrong blurb and thought we were going to see dolphins and whales – which as our captain pointed out, was unlikely on a fresh-water lake! So we stopped scanning the water with our binos and re-read the itinerary to discover we were going out to see Māori carvings, which indeed we did. They were carved into a rock wall in a bay which can only be reached by boat, below some very swanky houses. It was a little disappointing to discover they had only been done in the 1970s but all the same, at over ten metres high, they were quite something. They had been carved by Matahi Whakataka-Brightwell who had just completed his 10-year training with Māori elders and returned to his grandmother’s home at Lake Taupō to mark the occasion with a carving. The main carving is of Ngatoroirangi who guided the Māori tribes to Taupō more than a thousand years ago. It is surrounded by a mass of smaller carvings in the lower rocks.

Lake Taupo itself is also impressive. It is a crater lake created by a supervolcanic eruption which occurred approximately 25,600 years ago. At 616km², it is the largest lake in New Zealand and the second largest in Oceana after Lake Murray in Papua New Guinea. More than 30 rivers and streams flow into the lake, with only one outlet – the Waikato River (New Zealand’s longest river). This in turn creates the Huka Falls which, although not hugely impressive in height, its turquoise blue blows your mind though no one seems to be able to tell you why it is this extraordinary colour. I had the most lovely walk along the river to see the falls from every angle and ask a few more people for an explanation, but to no avail. Huka means “foam” in Maori.