Moring at the Taupo Motor Lodge comes with a distinct smell of sulfur. We can only guess that somewhere near Taupo there are some geothermal features producing the sulfurous emissions. Since today is primarily a travel day, we quickly get cleaned up, pack our belongings and pile into the car. If we want to see anything of the local area we need to get an early start.

We drive into the center of town and find a café where we can sit down for breakfast. By now we’re fairly familiar with the standard New Zealand breakfast fare. Peter changes things up a bit when he orders the “Full Breakfast” that includes hash browns, mushrooms, sausage, bacon, toast, eggs, and a baked tomato. I steal a few mushrooms, and half the baked tomato since Peter doesn’t really want it and add them to my scrambled eggs. Yummy!

We wander around for a little longer looking for a few specific souvenirs then head on out of town. Just outside of Taupo we stop at a point of interest called “Craters of the Moon”. His is a large geothermal area with fumaroles, mud pots, and hot areas, but no geysers. Instead they have these large craters where pressure from below has blown out blockages. The craters are large enough that I sure wouldn’t want to be around if one blew. According to some of the informational signs we read, the area of the craters is growing. The whole area is full of fumaroles or places where steam is just pouring from the hot ground. One of the larger craters was of particular interest because it had a pool of vigorously boiling water at the bottom. Most of the area is also covered with a dense low ground cover, so in many places the steam just seems to rise out of the undergrowth and looks almost like there might be a spot fire burning. It’s quite surreal.

We wander around for about 45 minutes then head back to our car. Most of the forests or bushy areas in New Zealand are completely abuzz or aflutter with various insect and bird life; very NOISY life. The area around Craters of the Moon is no exception. On our way back to the car we walk through an area of thick vegetation where Peter and I spot several of the most egregious of the noise makers in the forest. Cicadas are in every tree and bush throwing up a cacophony of sound that has an almost physical presence. We took a short opportunity to try and get some photos of these insects as they blasted the landscape with their noisome chatter. I pulled a high branch on a bush down closer to the trail so Peter might get a better shot. He in turn held the branch while I tried to get a few photos. For his trouble the cicada in question tried squirting him with something from its ass end. It was probably trying to tell Peter “Piss off buddy!”

After the photo op, we hop back in our car and head north again in earnest. We pretty much drive with only a couple of minor rest breaks for most of the rest of the day. We arrive back in Auckland at about 3:30 in the afternoon. We had back to the B&B where we first stayed to see if they could accommodate us. At first the answer was “No, we have no double occupancy rooms,” but then the answer slowly evolved to “Well…maybe we could fix up this one room we had closed for cleaning.” Eventually the host ended up moving another guest who hadn’t arrived yet and giving us their room. It only had one queen size bed, and a futon, but it was better than sleeping on a roll away bed again. The room was also much larger and nicer than the first one we stayed in. It definitely had a larger bathroom at the very least.

After getting our luggage settled in, we headed back out for a little more exploration of Auckland and to find dinner. We drove downtown again and parked near the Brittomart so we wouldn’t have any trouble finding our way back to our rental car. We walked back over to Viaduct Harbor since we’d noted several restaurants in the area while we searched for the Loaded Hog two weeks earlier. We stopped at the Portofino Italian Food restaurant for dinner. Our server is a very friendly Dutch young woman who says she and her boyfriend are working their way through New Zealand. We have some pasta and a very interesting blueberry cheese cake for desert.

It was getting late, at least by New Zealand standards, so we headed on back to our B&B. We needed to get everything ready for returning to the States and finish our last blog entries. Turns out I really didn’t get to much time to do that because we ended up chatting away with the other guests at the B&B. There was an American couple there who were visiting New Zealand for the first time. There was a retired couple from Ireland there who were touring New Zealand, Australia and would also be visiting the U.S. soon. There was also a woman from the U.S. who was there for the wedding of her niece. Her sister had been living in New Zealand for over 20 years and she was also staying at the B&B. We shared travel stories and gave them all some advice about how to go about their visit of New Zealand. We especially emphasized the usefulness of the “I-sites” in each town. We gave the Irish couple some advice about visiting California. They were thinking about renting a car in Los Angeles and driving north through San Francisco. We advised them to avoid renting a car IN Los Angeles and instead to take tour busses in LA then rent a car when they got to Santa Barbra since the traffic would be easier to deal with outside of LA.

We kept everyone up very late with stories of our travels and advice for their own journeys. Soon it was after midnight and I hadn’t finished even the first paragraph of today’s blog. Unfortunately it would have to wait a few more days…