Journey to Taupo

Early in the morning, we checked out the backpackers and waited for nakedbus to Taupo at Quay St, hoping that the cheap fare wasn't a catch and that we had to travel in nude. The bus arrived on time at 8:00am and nope, we were not asked to strip. However I did read a brochure on the bus explaining the reason of the relatively cheaper fare. Apparently nakedbus is operating on 100% online booking system, hence reducing the agency and ticketing cost. And that's why you can never book a nakedbus ride from i-site or backpackers. As for ticket, you can either print out online or pay a minimal fee (forgot the exact fee but less than a dollar for sure) to have the confirmation code sent to your mobile number to show to the driver when boarding.

As we left Auckland and started heading south to Taupo, the scenery changed and we were beckoned by miles and miles of trees, grazing lands, hills, and long white clouds backdropped by the deepest blue sky. And I couldn't help getting all excited and almost hysterical at the sight of heards of cows and sheep. Only then reality started kicking in, no shit, we are indeed in NZ!!!Occassionally as we passed by some small township, we would also see some interesting buildings or roadsigns, and sometimes funny vehicles along the road.

view from bus

most of the places and road names in Maori sounded funny to us, I swore i caught a glimpse of a street named "orangtua" on our way

dog-shaped i-site building in Tirau (i wonder how does the rear exit looked like)

cute little blue camper screaming 'where the hell are we" on the road (click on the image for enlarged view)

rows and rows of trees

miles and miles of grazing land

NZ is the land of the long white clouds - i was getting so obssessed about long clouds throughout the journey. mind you, they were really LOOOOOOONG!!!

The journey from Auckland to Taupo was about 5.5 hours. We had a 40-min pit stop at Rotorua, which was an hour away North of Taupo. Rotorua is another famous attraction in North Island for its geothermal sightseeing, hot springs, and zorbing. Apparently it is the only place to zorb in NZ. If given another chance, I would have chosen to spend a day in Rotorua before heading to Taupo, and tried the Zig-Zag Hydro Zorb ride!

kiwi sighting!! (later we learnt that kiwi was very dificult to see in the wild as they were night birds that only com out at night in bushes, and they have becoming very very rare nowadays. we only had a chance to see kiwi later in Queenstown wildlife bird park, but we didn't because it the entrance fee cost NZ$30 per person!)

close encounter with the sheep..baa....

our lunch - a bar of yummilicious Bloomsberry real kiwi chunk chocalate bar and Mc Coy real orange juice. Everything was real, as they claimed! I fell in love with Bloomsberry chocalate because of the nice and creative packaging. The one we bought was not as funny. Check out the website for their complete collection. I especially loved the pink and black "marital Bliss" bar, wicked!

a steam bore we passed by before Rotorua

another funny sounding street name in Rotorua

We finally arrived at Taupo at 1.30pm. Beckoning us was the largest lake in NZ, yes, the one I had to keep reminding everyone that it's as big as the entire Singapore island. NZ population (~4.2mil) is close to Singapore's (4.5mil). So, if we throw all the kiwis into lake Taupo, we'll get a pretty accurate population density of Singapore. Wicked!! Taupo was indeed a very nice town with beautiful landscape. What more, it's the place we were going to accomplish our mission: Jumping out of the plane from 12 thousand ft high!!!

street in Taupo town

loved this big tree by the lake, it was nice spot to have picnic or simply lying down looking at the sky

Lake Taupo

Clouds above Lake Taupo