Taupo

By the time I arrived in Taupo I was fairly tired as I had just done the Tongariro Crossing. So I had an early night. The next day I spent in and around Taupo. The lake is massive. I mistook it for the sea when I was on Mt Tongariro. It's about the size of Singapore! The coolest thing about the lake is that it's a crater formed by a huge eruption of the volcano that is still active underneath the lake. The guy who gave me a hitch to Taupo said that if you go to the middle of the lake you can see water bubbling due to the volcano.

I hired a bike from my hostel and spent the whole next day mountain-biking in the Craters of the Moon MTB Park. To get there, I cycled past Huka Falls which were pretty impressive. The mountain-biking was pretty good. It was more cross-country riding which is more what I'm used to but totally different to what I did in Queenstown. There was also many more trails including some tricky XC riding like bombholes. They had some good names for trails.