Last weekend, J and I went to Taupo to visit my friend Stevie, with whom I taught at Whare Kea for a few months when I first started. She then moved to Taupo, and we have been meaning to visit her and her partner, Ryan, ever since, but it's taken ages to actually make it happen.
After a nice (long) drive through beautiful countryside, we got to Stevie and Ryan's house, which is lovely, and has a nice view of Lake Taupo. The lake is the largest in NZ, and is in the caldera of the Taupo Volcano. It is quite a beautiful, clear mountain lake.
We had a beautiful homemade dinner of roast chicken and veggies, which I forgot to take a picture of, followed by great conversation, a good night's sleep, and then this amazingly delicious homemade breakfast! I told Stevie and Ryan that we'll be visiting as often as possible if they keep feeding us like this! We never have cooked breakfast, and it was such a treat!
On Sunday morning, they took us to Huka Falls, which is at the beginning of the Waikato River, which comes out of Lake Taupo. We've enjoyed walking along the Waikato in Hamilton, but I'd never realized that it started at Lake Taupo. Isn't the colour of the water amazing?
The falls are not tall, but it is an amazing amount of water cascading down, and again, the colour is phenomenal.
Just a bit further down, the water is much calmer, and the river already looks much more like it does in Hamilton. Although as Ryan pointed out, the colour is much better here, as it gets quite a bit of dirt in it from farming as it goes along.
Next, they took us to the Aratiatia dam, which opens three times a day to let out excess water. The dam is one of eight along the Waikato River that generate hydroelectric power. I hadn't realized this, but Ryan said that a significant percentage of NZ's power is generated in this way.
When the dam opens, 80,000 litres of water per second pour out!
This peaceful little pond was what greeted us when we got there, just a few minutes before the gates opened. Having seen the volume of water in the picture above, you can image how long that lasted!
The little pond starts filling up, and before you know it, it's turned into a flowing river, and then soon after that...
... it's unrecognizable! Scroll back up to my first picture, and you almost can't believe it's the same place! It was very cool to watch the transformation happen in just a few short minutes. I kept thinking that it must be as high as it could go, but the water would keep rising! There were trees that were almost completely submerged by the end!
Stevie and Ryan knew places near the dam where you could pick wild raspberries and blackberries, and they were so deliciously sun-kissed and juicy! I, of course, tripped into a bush and wounded my leg on the vicious thorns, but it was worth it!
We did lots more fun and beautiful things on that busy Sunday, but I'll save them for next time. Look out for Part 2, coming soon!
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