Kat's travels and adventures

Guess what... Welcome to my new post! The day after Taupo we went to River Valley, a place between Taupo and Wellington in the middle of nowhere. No reception, no internet and no Wifi. Nice scenery, but far away from everything. I didn’t to the river rafting or horse trekking aswell, that was wayy overpriced… Instead, I just slept in and got up at 9am- haven’t done this since I am in New Zealand. I buyed a portion of their chicken with sweet chili and rice for lunch, delicious :p In the afternoon we made our way to Wellington and arrived there very late at 7pm. There was an Eminem concert all weekend in Wellington, all hostels are booked out so I escaped all that and took the ferry to the South island yesterday. I met some friends from the bus to Hot Water beach again and we spent the time on the ferry together. It was very windy, but we were very lucky and saw heaps of dolphins, at least 7 groups and even some whales far away near the horizon. And guess what, the fe

So we arrived in Taupo in the early afternoon on Feb 25.  On our way we took a little break at Huka Falls, where the Waikato river (New Zealands longest river) starts. After arriving, I walked down to „the city centre“ and the lake.Though the city of Taupo is tiny, I liked it. On my way back from the south island to Auckland I’ll probably spend a few more days there. I went to the lak twice that day, the first time my camera’s battery died and the second one was still charging in the hostel, but it gave me the opportunity to see the the sunset on the lake the second time I went down.   Lake taupo is incredibly large, it is 616 square kilometres big, and a supervolcano at the same time. Thelast major eruption was 1.800 years ago and is the worlds most violent eruption in the last 5000 years!! Also, if you woul stretch a rope between the city of Taupo and the other end, it would be under the water surface in the middle as the lake even copes with the Earth's curvature!

Rotorua is known for the Maori villages, Tamaki and Te Puia [Te Puuja]. It was possible to just spend an evening at Tamaki, or stay overnight. I stayed overnight to get some quite deep insights in the Maori culture. And the price is worth it! I enjoyed it soo much, learning their alphabet, a Haka, sleeping in a hut designed like ancient ones, hearing about all the stories, taking part in a meeting of tribes ceremony and spending a little bit of time of the night in a hot pool.  The next day I stayed at Base Backpackers Rotorua, where I met Sophia (whom I met in the bus to Hot Water Beach) again. We more or less spontaneously decided to do a walk in the Redwood forests, and in total we walked 20km on that walk, weh ad a great time and then had dinner together. My night at Base was horrible, I first couldn’t sleep and then woke up at 3:30am not beeing able to go back to sleep for over an hour again. I had some weird roommates, felt like something was crawling on my skin the wh

The next stop was Waitomo, a place that has nothing to offer but their famous glowworm caves, not to be confused with fireflys ;) I’m not much into rafting so I decided to do the Ruakuri Cave walking tour, where taking photos was allowed unlike in the rafting tours, plus we also got to see the glowworms! I wish I could have seen the sunset on the beach afterwards aswell, but we had heavy rain that day… Well, I went to sleep at 9:30pm then to recharge my batteries. Travelling can be so exhausting when you're sitting on a bus for hours (almost) each day and do activities besides that! In the morning we did the Ruakuri bush walk, around and outside the caves where I've walked hrough the day before! Heaps of evil moskitos kept flying around us  In the light- Popcorn formation and on the right, curtain formation- or what one participant called it: Lasagne or pasta formation xD  The glowworms! they imitate a starry night sky, and it nearly looks like it on pictures