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Taupō – a lake larger than Singapore

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Thursday 19 February 2026 – Our task yesterday was to get the short distance from Rotorua to Taupō – about an hour’s drive – but first I had an astounding discovery to make. I’m not sure I was emotionally prepared for this sight at the breakfast buffet.

Could this really be Marmite?

The answer is – well yes, but not really any more.

Marmite started out in Britain, but the Sanitarium Health and Wellbeing Company obtained the rights to distribute, and later manufacture, Marmite in Australasia. Over time the recipe has diverged from the (proper) British version, manufactured nowadays by Unilever. Sanitarium Health and Wellbeing Company distribute it in Australia as well, but I never saw it on offer there; presumably the Vegemite Marketing Board actively seek to discourage it from ever actually being sold.

Does it taste like proper Marmite? Again, no, not really. I think it’s more similar in taste to Vegemite, with slightly fruity overtones. It still goes nicely with butter on toast, though.

So I learned a thing yesterday. O! How travel broadens the mind!

En route to Taupō there were a couple of things to see, the first of which was as a result of a tip from the friendly boatman at Orakei Korako; on learning of my happiness that there was boiling mud there he suggested we take a look at the Waiotapu Mud Pool. It being just off the route from Rotorua to Taupo, we did exactly that. It’s quite informally presented – just this pool beside the road with a little bit of parking for passers-by. But as a boiling mud offering, it’s definitely very classy.

There’s a side path to a higher viewpoint, too.

It has a couple of small mud volcanoes

and lots and lots and lots of bubbling, seething mud. It was fun trying to capture a sequence of shots of an eruption.

There’s something quite hypnotic about watching boiling mud. One gets quite nerdish about trying to predict when one particular patch is about to erupt into some violent upheaval.

The road we were travelling towards Taupō is rather dramatically called the Thermal Explorer Highway, though officially it has the prosaic name of State Highway 5. Anyway, evidence of geothermal activity can be spied as one drives along.

I’d been hoping that this was another geothermal park, but we think that it is actually a (geothermal) power station; less romantic but a great deal more practical.

The other thing to see on the road to Taupō is the Huka Falls. Despite the name, this is not any kind of waterfall that, say, an Icelander would recognise, but it’s an impressive water feature that may well still cause him to stroke his chin. It’s a cataract caused by a significant narrowing of the channel running between two wider bodies of water. I guess it would be impressive enough anyway, but the colour of the water as it gushes through the channel is beautiful.

We stopped off first at a lookout over the scene.

and then went down to examine it more closely.

It’s difficult to capture photographically in its entirety; video does it slightly better justice.

By this stage we were on the outskirts of Taupō town, and it was a short drive to our accommodation, the Reef Resort. The word “Resort” somehow conjures up images of a significant property laden with palm-fringed swimming pools, restaurants, maybe even a golf course or two. The Reef Resort is not like that. It’s perfectly comfortable, but is small and just a little bit old-fashioned and dowdy in its decor and facilities. It has a swimming pool, which is not of interest to me, and a guest laundry, which is. Therefore, on arrival, apart from a mug of Twining’s Finest Earl Grey, my first task was to do the laundry. Well, these things are important, you know. Our next task was to get into Taupō town to (a) ensure we knew where to go to board the cruise in plan for the next day and (b) find a Woollies in order to buy ourselves some dinner; we’ve been short on vegetables these last few days, and when you get to our age these things matter. Driving around, the town had given us the feeling that it was rather like an American seaside resort; walking from the harbour to the shopping centre reinforced that impression. There were no pedestrian crossings to get across a busy four-lane road which had constant traffic and we had to dice with death when dashing across. Anyway, a successful turn around Woolworth’s ensured that we returned laden with fruit and salad and settled in for the rest of the day.

And so ended yesterday.

Today’s activity was a cruise on the lake. Not just any old cruise, you understand, but one with a specific objective beyond showing us the general scenery from the water; some “Māori carvings”. Our cruise was on a catamaran run by Chris Jolly Outdoors, and we certainly hoped that the outdoors would be jolly today. Looking out over the lake from our accommodation, it seemed a bit windy, and in fact the cruise organisers were giving people an opportunity to book at a later date as today’s conditions might not allow for getting as close to the carvings as would be possible on a calmer day. We decided to stick with it (mainly on the basis that we were moving on tomorrow, but also on the basis that I had a decent, though not Big, lens on the Nikon).

The skipper, Jimmy, gave us the usual safety briefing

part of which was explaining the thing about the wind and the concomitant necessity of hanging on to the boat when moving about. As you can see, there was coffee and tea available, and I was a little surprised that they were just free standing there. Which they weren’t after a bit – with only a small amount of stuff crashing to the floor, they were cleared out of the way when the going got a bit rough.

Jimmy then drove and commentated as we went,

pointing out various features, such as the desirable residential area of Acacia Bay

and Mokoia or Te-Motu-tapu-a-Tinirau,

the “Sacred Island”, which has a deep cultural significance for Māori people; visiting is forbidden except with explicit permission. Behind it, in the distance to the south of the lake, is Mount Tongariro, of which you might be hearing a lot more in coming days. Or not. You’ll have to keep checking in to find out. Another thing I learned from his commentary is the correct pronunciation of Taupō, which sounds more like “Toe paw”.

We motored around the headland to Mine Bay and the Māori carvings that were the principal object of the cruise, and which are only accessible on the water. Having not really thought much about it, I had expected the carvings to be some kind of historic work by Māori ancestors. Very wrongly, as it turns out. The carvings were created in the 1970s by Matahi Whakataka-Brightwell, a master carver with deep roots in Māori heritage, honouring Māori ancestral legacies.

The central carving, 14 meters high, depicts the legendary navigator Ngātoroirangi, a revered navigator who guided the Tūwharetoa and Te Arawa tribes to the Taupō region over a millennium ago. The artworks depict not only his legacy but also tupuna (ancestors) and kaitiaki (guardians).

Some care was needed when trying to photograph these carvings.

The conditions weren’t ideal, but people managed to get the photos they needed, I think.

If you want to know more about how the carvings were done, you can find it on this YouTube video.

We then headed back around the headland, and Jimmy pointed out various neighbourhoods and other landmarks as we passed them. I took a photo of the area where our accommodation is;

it’s just to the left of the white boxy structure by the lakeside. Just thought you’d like to know. Also visible is a mountain range called the “Sleeping Warrior”

(with a bit of imagination you can see a head and a nose to the right, and the rest of the body in the centre), and Mount Tauhara,

just to the east of Taupō town, which can be climbed by keen beans with the right footwear.

Jane spotted someone parasailing

and, as we approached Taupō,

we saw some kayakers.

Unsurprisingly, Taupō is a great place for people into watersports and water-based activities. There’s not much else here, though.

After disembarking, and acting on a tip from Jimmy, we headed into the desirable Acacia Bay area, aiming to get to a cafe called Cafe L’Arte (L’Arte, Latte, geddit?) which sounded an interesting place to get some coffee. It’s a few kilometres around the lake from Taupō town on a side road, and you get a sense of what the place is like from the signpost that takes you on to that road.

When you get to its turning, you get a further idea,

and walking through from the car park completes the picture.

It’s quite the first impression – like something out of Gaudi’s Park Güell.

It’s also very popular. I don’t know if all the cruiser skippers recommend the place, but it had the air of having several post-cruise punters all arriving at the same time.

It’s a delightful place – good coffee, good food and absolutely dripping with colourful art.

A picture of the counter underneath the counter

There’s a gallery and shop

and it’s altogether a lovely place to spend a little time mooching around.

After our lunch, we headed back to our accommodation. Since we’re not much into watersports or lounging on the beach, there wasn’t anything else for Taupō to offer us, so we took it easy for the rest of the day.

The morrow takes us south to a possible adventure, depending on the weather and our courage. I’m being deliberately cryptic here; you’ll have to stay tuned to see how things get decoded.

Day 8 – Lucignano to Buonconvento – Short but interesting

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Wednesday 21 May 2025 – With only 13km to cover today, we could afford a leisurely start. Not too leisurely, though; our bags still have to be ready to be collected by 8am to be taken to our next destination. But at least the alarm was set for a slightly later time than heretofore.

The hotel had some interesting wall decorations: photos of places we have visited, such as Monteriggioni and San Gimignano and others, some of which we will pass through or near.  It also had a couple of items of Sienese interest: a picture of the 17 emblems of the contrade in suitably victorious poses

and a monochrome photo which gives a compelling insight into the excitement the Palio jockeys must inevitably face.

Breakfast (a typical Italian affair) over, we started out just after 9am, bidding farewell to Lucignano

as we carefully negotiated about half a kilometre of main road to get back to the Via, occasionally leaping into the undergrowth to ensure that the thundering great lorries missed us. (OK, I admit it – this was basically to avoid retracing our steps along yesterday’s lengthy diversion when a short cut – albeit not a recommended one – was available).

We rejoined the Via, which led over a railway

and then on a track beside it.

We had understood that the railway was practically disused, with traffic running only on special occasions, so I popped up to take some photos along the line (not very interesting) and to see whether walking along it was better underfoot than the path (not). So it was a bit of a shock when a train went past a few minutes later, I can tell you.

The temperature was agreeable – probably around 20°C, and the only signs of yesterday evening’s downpour were the reasonably high humidity, grass still wet on the track and some slightly slippy muddy patches. But getting our feet wet wasn’t a particular problem; we just walked on without any issues. The scenery was very agreeable and very Tuscan;

we will be going through the Val d’Orcia, which is a UNESCO World Heritage area where the extensive use of cypress trees was first adopted. As you can see, it has spread and is now a sort of pictorial shorthand for the landscapes of Tuscany.

Disused items of agricultural machinery were dotted around the area, original uses for which we wot not of (and neither, by the way, does Google Lens).

Also dotting the landscape were various artworks, some of which were definitely part of the “Museo de Arte Diffusa” (first works seen yesterday)

This one, at Ponte d’Arbia, probably represents pilgrims crossing the pilgrtim bridge

and some which probably weren’t.

At one point, astonishingly, we had the opportunity to fill in a questionnaire about our presence on the Via.

For the first time since we started out from Altopascio, we saw cattle;

and, later on, donkeys,

one of whom looked distinctly Eeyorish.

About halfway along the route was a place called Ponte d’Arbia, where, importantly, there was a coffee stop. Unsurprisingly, the place sported a bridge across the river Arbia,

but, we saw on the S-cape app, it also has a second bridge, the “Ponte del Pellegrino”. I was expecting this to be a rickety-rackety affair (minus the troll; trolls hate Italian sunshine), but I was very wrong indeed.

Located at the foot of the far side of the Ponte del Pellegrino

It was constructed in 2016, for a Jubilee Year (Giubileo della Misericordia) and renovated in 2024 in time for this year, which is also a Jubilee Year, albeit only a Giubileo Ordinario. (Both Jubilees were declared by Pope Francis.)

Ponte d’Arbia clearly has a local council who are invested in wayside art, no matter how incomprehensible.

After Ponte d’Arbia, we had to climb a couple of hills, the first quite small

but the second more substantial, and quite as steep as any of Siena’s streets, only longer.

The view from the top was nice, of course.

(I am really looking forward to doing a proper job of processing these images when I get home. What you see here is, broadly speaking, what comes out of the Sony camera, with a little tweaking via the Android Gallery app; but I will be able to benefit from a PC and my beloved DxO Photolab at home to get detail out of the RAW files.)

On our way up this final climb, we heard a very strange noise, which we first thought might have been some corvids having a row in the trees. But then we passed a pond,

and realised that the deafening racket was from frogs. I couldn’t capture them on video, but just listening to them provided a pleasing diversion for several minutes.

Going down the other side of the hill, in the distance, we saw Buonconvento

and were soon walking into the town,

which is not large, but its centro storico is very attractive.

Our hotel, the rather more modern Ghibellino,

had a room ready and our bags had arrived, so we were able to hose ourselves down and head out for lunch. Jane had booked, on the strength of proximity and Google reviews, a table for 2pm, and so we found our way to the Ristorante Bar Amici di Campriano.

It’s not a posh place and seems on the face of it a bit chaotic (it’s also a delicatessen), but we found ourselves a table and ordered ourselves a G&T (no ice – the machine was broken). We liked the look of a couple of the pasta dishes (unusual for me) and ordered them and some vegetables, but no secundi piatti. The pasta was delicious, but we were a  bit puzzled not to get the veg. It turned out that they were planning to wait and serve us the veg as our main course, which is very Italian, I suppose; but we got them to bring out the spinach and the fennel early, and very good it was, too. The service was very friendly and the whole thing was very good v. for m. We had a chat wth Il Patrone, who has his own vineyard and uses the place to serve his wine. All very engaging, if a little informal.

We pottered round the corners of Buonconvento after lunch. There aren’t many of them, as the centro storico is quite small, but it is lovely.

The church, of St. Peter and St. Paul, has some lovely stained glass.

It is clearly modern, featuring JFK, Gandhi, Pope John Paul II (we think) and Martin Luther King, as well as other faces we cannot indentify with certainty; but we feel that the common theme is that they all died for their faith or beliefs.

At first, I thought that Buonconvento would feature a good convent, but actually its name stems from the Latin bonus conventus, “happy place”. Not a bad name, I reckon – we found it very pleasant.

Today was a short and pleasant day. Tomorrow will be harder work!

The total ascent will be over 500m, so I feel the need for walking poles coming on. The weather forecast is OK – 24°C, no rain until later in the day – and there should be at least one place for a reviving coffee (and quite probably a beer) en route. We’ll be heading into the Val d’Orcia so I expect to be taking lots more photos of cypress-strewn landscapes. Come back soon to find out if that was the case, eh?

A Final Flurry in Florence

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Thursday 8 May 2025 – Jane had booked tickets for the Uffizi galleries with an entry time of 10.45, which made for a relaxed start to the day – a leisurely breakfast and then a 15-minute walk to get there. The galleries are very imposing slabs of masonry which flank a street, unimaginatively called Piazzale degli Uffizi. You go in one side, walk through galleries along it, and then cross over via a bridge to the other side before walking back along that. The best view to get a grasp of it comes, actually, from inside.

The Piazzale runs down the middle, and the entrance gates are on the right in this picture; typically one approaches the complex from the direction of the Palazzi Vieccho, which you can see in the distance. Actually, finding the right gate is the immediate challenge; we had to find Gate 3 in order to pick up our pre-booked tickets before entering through Gate 1. The signposting provided is very discreet, and it had us trawling the length of the Piazzale from top to bottom before indicating that we should have been back to the top. A friendly army chap pointed us in the right direction and we picked up our tickets with no problem, then crossed the Piazzale to Gate 1, where there were several queues.

The queues, while substantial, are very well-managed, and promptly at our allocated time we filed in through Gate 1, passed security – and equally promptly walked the length of the building so we were back at the Palazzo Vecchio end. There followed four flights of steps to get to the top gallery, which was, well, very museum-ish.

The ceilings to these corridors are amazing – every panel is different.

You make your way along this main drag, every so often being offered a side show, typically featuring the work of a prominent artist, e.g. Botticelli. So you can pile in and take a look.

The Botticelli exhibits were in more than one side room, and the main interest lay in the second room.

“Primavera” is clearly a painting of great interest, as is Venus on the half-shell.

One has to fight through towards the front to get half a chance of an unobstructed view.  As usual, lots of people were not interested in seeing a unique piece of classical art unless they were in the foreground.

Harrumph.

At the end of the main drag, the corridor turns a sharp right and then right again to take one back down the other side. It’s here that one can see the galleries in the first photo in this post; also, since one is by now at the river end of things, you get a superb view of the bridges of Florence

with the Ponte Vecchio nicely in the foreground.

On the way back along the other corridor, one is offered such masters of art as Michaelagelo and Da Vinci. We popped in to the Raphael gallery, which was

a bunfight; I managed to get a photo of his picture of John the Baptist as a young man.

Then we got to the best bit – the cafeteria. You’ll have twigged by now that all this classical art does nothing for me, so I was glad to be able to sit down for a coffee and a beer. There’s a nice rooftop terrace, with fantastic views over the city which have been carefully obscured by fairly high walls around the terrace. You can get an eyeful of the upper stories of the cathedral campanile and the Palazzo Vecchio

but that is, frankly, about it. Coffee over, it’s simply a matter of

four flights of stairs down and back out into the Piazza della Signoria, by the Palazzo Vecchio, where one can get a nice snap of David and Goliath Hercules doing the “protect the city” bit.

As ever, one has to jockey for position,

but there’s also the opportunity to see Neptune having a slash.

Well, even the gods have to go, and he presumably must normally have a silent pee as in “swimming”.

Our next port of call was something that Bianca, our guide of yesterday, had recommended. From the outside, it’s not particularly prepossessing

but inside the Opificio delle Pietre Dure  is a whole different story, something I found hugely more engaging than all that celebrated classical art in the Uffizi. It is home to the museum of artistic production in semi-precious stones, and the artwork on display is wonderful to behold. There are works of art, all executed in stone, some small

Bible stories

and some larger, like this tabletop, which is a good metre and a half wide.

The inlay stone work is phenomenal – here is one of the birds from that table top.

A common theme is the reconstruction of paintings in decorative stone.

Stone work above, original painting below

and there are many examples on view. They’re all exquisite and some are seriously impressive; shown below are two examples with close ups of details below (I hope; I can’t be held responsible for how your browser decides it’s going to show you this).

Upstairs in this small museum is given over to showcasing the workshop – the workstations that artists will sit at,

the tools they use

and the stones that form the raw materials.

I think we spent longer in this relatively tiny place than we did in the Uffizi. It was a delightful interlude. However, lunch was beckoning and we had to head out into the crowded streets and back down towards the river, past the cathedral, where the street artists were clearly setting themselves up for the expected weekend rush of punters.

(The city was, once again, very crowded – many large tour groups and also groups of schoolkids, largely younger than the ones we’d seen yesterday). We had a little time to spare, and Jane had found a Basilica for us to investigate – the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella. It is at one end of a very pleasant piazza (I don’t, I think, need to tell you its name, which was not imaginatively coined)

and is a striking building.

The distinctive Florentine white-and-green is not in marble but is painted on, Nonetheless, it’s a splendid edifice, and the inside is matchingly splendid.

There is some nice stained glass, both traditional and more modern

and some sumptuously decorated chapels.

Even the gift shop gets the treatment.

The Basilica boasts not one but two cloisters: a small one

which has a remarkable Spanish Chapel off one arm featuring astonishing artwork

with a stunning ceiling;

and a larger one

with artworks in every arch.

Once outside, we saw that the splendid facade was not matched by the view of the back of the Basilica. It’s very handsome, sure, but not as striking as the front.

I had booked us a late lunch (acting on a suggestion from ChatGPT, actually) at somewhere grandly calling itself the Angel Roofbar. After a certain amount of blundering about we found it, five storeys up, and settled down for a Nice Lunch.  I found it a bit of a strange place. I had been expecting a restaurant, but it was more a cocktail bar which did some food. The food was  good and the service very affable, but both food and drink service stopped prompt at 3pm, which was a bit odd since we had a 2,30 table; we had to plead with the waitress to make us a drink to have with our main courses, which was a bit unusual.  The views over the city I had been expecting were decent enough but not remarkable

but anyway we departed refreshed with only a couple of things left on the day’s agenda. One was a matter of practicality: we have to catch a train earlyish tomorrow and we wanted to make sure we knew roughly how the station worked, so we walked over to check out what we’ll have to do tomorrow morning. En route, we passed a very attractive wine bar

with people standing in the sunshone outside with their glasses of wine; and a nice piece of marketing at a bistro

with a replica of the Duomo featuring corks – very cute.

Having checked out the station, we headed back towards our hotel, going via another place that Bianca had recommended – the Annunziata Church itself. We couldn’t get in yesterday because a service was under way (you’ll of course remember the photos of the little cloister outside the doors that I shared yesterday), but it was open now, and so we went in.

Blimey!

It’s quite a place,

with a multitude of highly decorated chapels along each side

and a remarkably-painted cupola.

So we were glad that we’d made the effort to see inside, as it made a fitting end to the day’s perambulations.

Or almost, anyway.

We had one more thing to do, on the recommendation of a friend – to go and see the cathedral lit up in the evening. So we did. It’s very beautiful.

So, th-th-that’s all (for Florence), folks! Tune in again soon to see how our time in Pisa worked out.