A walk to huka fall

After we got the adrenaline rush from skydiving, we were obviously still high and decided to walk all the way from town to Huka Falls trek. We started off from town centre around 1pm. Along the way to the walking trek to huka falls, we passed by housing areas where all houses had lovely backyard views, looking over Waikato River, NZ longest river.

lovely backyard views of some of the houses

turqoish blue Waikato River

Soon, we reached at the Taupo Bungy site over Waikato River. It was the world’s first cantilevered bungy platform and NZ highest water touch. There were a queue for the jump and we watched some 5-6 people jumping off and screaming on top of their lungs. No, we were still not interested in doing that.

Taupo Bungy site

no. of jumps to date (10 April 2007) - 221,832

you jumped, i watched, he shot

After we left the crazy bungy site, we continue heading towards huka falls. We passed by a thermal spa park and a hot water stream. Alas, we forgot to bring our swimsuit and could only watch people soaking in the hot, steamy stream.

the beginning of the trek to Huka Falls

i'm balanced, for a second

cushion rolling competition

me and my grass bed!

reflection! reflection! yd's obsession

steamy hot water stream

gigantic!!

baby fern, an icon of nz

nice scene along the trek

It took us about 1.5 hours from the beginning of the trek to finally reach Huka Falls. But the journey was well-worth. The scene at the falls was spectacular. Huka falls are the largest falls on Waikato river. There's enough water from the falls to fill an olympic-sized pool within few seconds!!

Upstream of the falls

gushing water

the contrast between left and right

we each made a wish at the falls with coins (RM): mine - to be able to hitch a ride back to town; yd's - to be able to hitch a ride to Wellington.....mine came true!

Huka jetboating

Huka in Maori means 'foam'

thirst quenched and the water tasted...err...water?

We left the falls and took another route back to town. We tried our hands on hitch-hiking for the very first time! There wasn't much traffic along the way but we managed to get our very first ride after 20min! And the driver's name was Bill, same as our farmstay host's whom we were going to meet soon!

pick me up, please!

scary skid mark - guess what happened?

After spending a fortune on skydiving (which we never regreted a bit), we decided to cut down on the day's spending by cooking dinner for ourselves. We bought some marinated lamb rump and mushroom from local butchery and minimart for $15. It was yummy!

yum!yum!yum!!!

Later we booked 2 bus tickets from nakedbus again to go to Wellington tomorrow; and two soundsair tickets from Wellington to Picton, South island the next day morning. Our bus would arrive wellington at night and we planned to camp overnight at the airport to save the accommodation cost.

That night when we got back to our room, we met our first dorm-mate, Itay, from Israel. He was a friendly guy and we got along well and exchanged our experience and culture a little. He told us that he had been hitch hiking all the times and all the way from south island, and assured us that it was rather easy. It was indeed a confidence boost to us! Out of curiosity, we asked him how Israel is like and mentioned to him that Israel was the only country in world that we Malaysian can't visit and that it was stated in our passport. He then told us that they were not allowed to visit most of the Muslim countried either, but it wasn;t stated in their passport because as he said, "there were so many of them there's not enough space to list all in a single page"! LOL