Haku Falls

Day 167 – Taupo

Internet isn’t cooperating tonight, so I’m writing from my phone and I haven’t been able to upload my pictures. (I’m trying an upload through my phone, it seems to be working.)

The first thing to see in Taupo is Haku Falls. The river Waikato flows from Lake Taupo (threw me for a loop), then pass through a narrow gorge where it froths and foams and because a beautiful, aquamarine blue before falling in beautiful falls. That’s Haku Falls.

Haku Falls

You can walk there (1 hour and a half), you can go on a jetboat ($129), or you can take a local bus (10 min, $2).

The thing is, the local bus runs twice a day, and likes to be early at the stop. So I missed the morning one. 

No worries (Kiwis like to say that, with G’day when you pass them on a trail), I went for a walk along the lake. The waters are beautiful, there are ducks, black swans and pigeons, and occasionnaly a warning about scalding water above a tiny steamy stream going into the lake.

I chose not to wade into it, though on the way back, I saw children bathing a bit further, where the water made a pool and had cooled down.

This time I was very early for the afternoon bus, which was again 2 min early. The ride to the falls is quick, and most of the passengers went out with me. 

I wrote already about the falls. They are spectacular. Then I took the path back to the town. Three quarter of the way back, I found the hot spring.

There are not only public bathrooms but changing rooms, wooden steps to go down in the water, and numerous warnings about not going swimming in the main body of the water, where the current is very strong.

Less fun is swimming in warm waters and hitting suddenly a cold current!

But after a nice dip, then drying up in the sun, I finished the walk back to the town.

The picture on the header is a flowering cabbage tree. No, cabbages do not grow on trees in New Zealand! But you can eat the heart of the big leaves and it tastes like cabbage. 

When nice Europeans settlers decided that a south-facing slope was better to get nice, warm exposure for their settlement and fields, they hadn’t quite taken into account their new hemisphere. So when the crop failed and they became hungry, Maori people showed them how to harvest this tree, and they named it cabbage tree after the taste.