Taupo (Contiki Day 3)

We headed to Taupo which is situated on the biggest lake in New Zealand, Lake Taupo. At the far end of the lake is a volcano, so needless to say the area is quite picturesque.

In the morning, we did a 5km hike, which started at Huka Falls, and then followed the river into the town of Taupo. Along the way, we stopped to watch the Taupo Bungy. Watching people huck themselves off the 40 meter cliff, made me think twice about trying bungy. Definitly having second thoughts about doing it in Queenstown. My legs felt like jello standing on the edge of the cliff watching.

That afternoon was Rock N Ropes. Its a high ropes course, which features different elements (such as walking across polls, wires, bridges, etc). All of the elements are about 45 feet off the ground.

The toughest element involves climbing a poll (similar to a telephone poll), and then boosting yourself up onto the peak, so that your standing on top of the poll. Once standing on top of the poll, you have to jump out and grab a trapeze. The trapeze is probably 1.5 meters out, so it takes a decent size jump to grab it. It was extremely scary. Once your hanging from the trapeze, you have to let go and drop down. The whole time you are on belay, which means an instructor on the ground controls how much you fall. Once you let go, he drops you really fast, and stops you only a couple feet from the ground, right as you think you're about to hit the ground.

(Me getting ready to jump off the poll and grab the trapeze. Glad the photo is from far away, so you can't see how scared I am)

After that was a giant swing. This element is simple as all you have to do is jump off a platform. Once in the air, you freefall for a second, before the wires catch you and you go swinging back and forth. Right as I jumped, the instrcutor yelled that I wasn't attached! aaaahhhh! But he was only playing a trick on me, and the wires soon caught me (I was actually attached the whole time).

(Doing the giant swing)

That night he had a booze cruise on Lake Taupo. The crew caught fish which served as one of the entrees for dinner. Since this blog is rated PG, I'm not gonig to get share what happened for the rest of the night. Lets just say I partied like a rock star.

(some unnecessary Jagarbombs at the end of the night)(Helen from Australia, Anne from Australia, Johan from Germany)

The town of Taupo was crazy that night, as a professional car race series was in town. Taupo's population is only 20,000, but the race attracted 70,000 people into town. They closed down of one of the main streets to allow overflow from the bars. It was pretty insane.

Daily Activities:
- Rock N Ropes: Hanging around 40 feet off the road on ropes doing different swings, walks, and jumps
- Booze Cruise: shots, chugging contests, drinking Canadian Club with Assues, etc.