December 28th, 2019
After leaving Lake Taupo my plan was to head to a place
called Minginui, on Braden’s recommendation.
There were a few common tourist spots to hit before I got too far from
the lake. The first was Huka Falls on
the Waikoto River which drains from the Lake Taupo. The cool thing is that it goes from a 100
meter wide channel to 15 meters so the water really gets going, or flowing I
should say. It was a very busy spot and
parking was hard to come by. I parked
off the side of the road and walked down, crossed the little pedestrian bridge
that was packed with people, snapped a few pics and wandered about 50 meters
down the other side of the river. A few
more photos and videos later and I was out of there. For some reason I have had a low tolerance
for busy touristy spots lately. But I’m
glad I checked it out, the rushing water was impressive.
Next was a tourist attraction called “Craters of the Moon”. Good name I thought. It was a 45 minute walk around a geothermic
area. Steam was coming out from here and
there but in general most of it was pretty tame. The mud pool was dried up and not the
bubbling, boiling you’d expect. They did
have one new vent that was very noisy and pumping out the steam like it was a
jet engine. All in all, it was an okay
stop for $8, but I wouldn’t do it again.
On my way towards Minginui the road headed towards popular
Rotorua which is really well known for it geothermal pools. I pulled into one of the most popular attractions,
Wai-O-Tapu (which means sacred waters), but it was a gong show for
parking. It was a hot day and I didn’t
really feel like seeing more hot pools of water, even those these were the best
around. So I continued on to Minginui.
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