Day 18 - More water

The end is approaches as we fly out of Auckland tomorrow. So today we travelled north getting a little past Hamilton where we had intended to stay overnight - but everything was booked due to a Rugby match we suspect. Weather didn't make sleeping in the van that attractive proposition, so it was fortunate we found a backpackers not too far away off the beaten track.

Leaving Lake Taupo we'd stopped off to see the Huka Falls where water from the Waikato river that drains the Lake is forced through a narrow channel at an impressive rate (220,000 litres per second!). There's a video of someone paddling Huka falls here. We did not paddle it! (or see anyone else do so.)

A short distance away are the "Craters of the Moon" - an area of hot springs that became more active after an earthquake caused some of the water trapped in the fault to drain away (space for condensing). The result is fumeroles, craters, and boiling mud pools spewing an impressive amount of steam (smelling of rotten eggs of course). What was most astounding was the noise as one particular vent was so active that it sounded like a steam engine.

A drive through the rain took us to Waitomo where we finished off doing a couple of tours of two of the caves there to look at the Glow worms. The first took us into the smallest cave there where we got taken into a chamber by boat. (Glow worms feed on insects brought in by rivers.) The chamber had hundreds of thousands of glow worms - it was like looking up at the milky way on a very clear night. It's quite spooky to be able to see people around you by just the light of these insects! The second tour accesses 1.5km of a 7km cave used by the black water rafters where we saw more in the way of stalactites and stalagmites and got some close up views of more glow worms.