Tag Archives: Tourism

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 Motutaiko 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.

Intermission: we take to the trees

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Tuesday 17 February 2026 – Warning! Photographic Nerdery Alert!

The activity that Jane found for us this evening was prompted by a conversation she had with Peter, in whose company we spent the day with Kiwi Dundee, back in the Coromandel Peninsula. He’d mentioned that Sue and he had walked a trail through Redwood trees near Rotorua, the trail being walkways actually up in the trees. Jane discovered that these walkways are open during the evening as well as in the daytime, with the process of teetering in the dark across narrow, bouncy rope suspension bridges leavened by lanterns hung among the trees. I had also heard passing comments by some American tourists in our hotel about doing the Redwood walk, so I knew it was A Thing. It’s also a Popular Thing, so we went late in the hope that the queue might have died down a bit.

There was space in the car park, which was a good omen as we approached the trail.

However, there was a substantial queue,

which an operative opined was about 45 minutes’ worth. I nearly bailed out until I saw the expression on Jane’s face. We joined the back of the queue, which moved slowly forward as people were released into the treewalk. It wasn’t too bad, actually – I suppose we queued for about half an hour – but immediately in front of us was an extremely annoying American student, who clearly came from a wealthy background and spent pretty much the whole time in the queue talking to his companion in a gratingly loud voice about his two million dollar trust fund and what he might do with it when he got his hands on it.

But eventually, at about 2215, we reached the front of the queue and were released into the treewalk. One walks up a spiral ramp to get to the start.  The trail consists, as I’ve said, of narrow and bouncy suspension bridges between platforms; the platforms encircle the trunk of the various trees. The rules said no photography on the bridges and there were theoretically limits on the number of people allowed at any one time on bridges or platforms, but it was never an issue for us – it was not at all crowded once we got started.

The lanterns hung among the trees were pretty spectacular.

The entire lighting was designed by David Trubridge, who specialises in designing pendant lamps, and it’s touted as New Zealand’s “first design-led tourist venture”. There are 85 lanterns in total, with designs inspired by New Zealand’s flora and fauna, including the owl, cicada wings, falcon, and Kowhai flowers. Some more numbers: the walk is 700m long, with 28 suspension bridges and 27 platforms.

The challenge posed by this lighting is capturing it photographically.  I took my Nikon with me on the basis that the bigger sensor would give me the best chance of capturing decent images; and both Jane and I also used our Samsung phones which have a “night shot” facility to help capture images in dark situations.

See? I warned you that there would be some photographic nerdery.

The comparison between what you get with the Nikon and with the phone is quite striking.

Samsung

Nikon – with HDR processing

The night mode of the phone takes multiple images at different exposures and overlays them to fill out dark areas.  On the surface, it looks like the phone has done a good job, but examining the details reveals that the noise processing algorithm as part of night photography has smeared quite a lot of the detail in the darker areas. The Nikon produces a much darker photo, because I dialled in a 2-stop darkening exposure compensation when I took the photo. In the above example, I have tweaked the photo to bring out the darker areas, but it’s still left things quite dark in the margins.  To match what the phone has done, I had to push the exposure back up by those two stops

and apply the world-class noise reduction that DxO Photolab offers. The result looks similar to what the phone produced all on its own, but the details show that the Nikon image is technically cleaner.

I actually took the same photo again on the Nikon, this time without the -2 stop  exposure correction

and this has actually come out really well.  What does this demonstrate?

  1. The phone does a pretty good job if you’re going to showcase your results on the web
  2. For most of the photos I took on the Nikon, I was too aggressive with my exposure compensation; I didn’t do a god job of judging the exposure
  3. But at least with the Nikon I had the option of control. With the phone’s night mode, it makes all the decisions and you’re stuck with those in whatever the results are.

Here’s another comparison, in a section where a laser was playing multiple beams across the trees below the walkway.

Samsung

Nikon

You can see that the multiple images used in the Samsung shot has resulted, unsurprisingly, in a much brighter image with more laser reflections. The Nikon image again is technically much superior, with deeper blacks and much less noise. But which is “better” really resides in the eye of the beholder: which do you prefer?

It was in this area that Jane took a picture to show the bridges that are slung between the platforms.

A fundamental point demonstrated by the exercise of taking photos in these tricky situations is one of individual preference. I took several images of an owl illumination (all with the Nikon), and this is the version I settled on.

I did this by using High Dynamic Range (HDR) processing, taking advantage of a RAW image – I compressed the dark and light parts to bring out the dark areas a bit.  On the other hand, I could have simply pushed the exposure up by two stops, and got this.

Neither is “better” than the other – they’re just different ways of processing a tricky subject. I also took a version without stopping down the exposure so much, and this is what I got.

Now, I think that’s over-exposed. But someone else might not.

We saw again the difference between phone and Nikon later on.

Samsung

Nikon

actually not exactly the same scene, but once again it shows the propensity of the phone to provide a brighter image.

The walkway splits into two about half way round; one can opt to carry on at the same level, which is 9m above the forest floor; or to go up to a higher walkway, about 20m above the ground.

On the higher route, the bridges are outlined in light.

Samsung

Nikon, HDR processed

Nikon, exposure pushed +2 stops

I think what matched best what one saw is shown in the last image; the Samsung photo is dramatic but overdone.

OK, enough with the nerdery.  Here are some more images from the rest of the walkway.

Samsung

Samsung

Samsung

Nikon

Nikon

Samsung

Nikon

Samsung – Jane being artistic

Samsung – me not being artistic

Nikon

We eventually reached the end of the track, with a spiral down that runs outside the spiral up to the start.

As you exit, you pass a section of Redwood trunk cut in 1952. It is, of course, set up as a selfie- or group photo backing

Someone with much better eyesight than me has counted the rings in from the outside to determine that this tree was over 2,000 years old. And then put labels on to show what was going on in the world as the tree grew.

Thought-provoking, eh?

It was fun walking the trail, and, with thanks to Jane, I’m glad I overruled my usual impatience with queuing to walk the trail at night. That was our last activity in Rotorua. Tomorrow, we move on a short way down the road to Taupo. There are a couple of possibly interesting things to see en route and a cruise on Lake Taupo once we’re there. I shall report back and hope you return to read all about it.

 

Kiwi bono?

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Tuesday 17 February 2026 – Apart from the Haka and Brendan McCullum, what New Zealand is best known for is the Kiwi, in all the various connotations of that word – an adjective to describe its inhabitants or its Rugby League team, a brand name for shoe polish (actually developed by an Aussie, but his wife was a New Zealander), a fruit… or the species of the country’s, possibly the world’s, oddest bird. Today we went to the National Kiwi Hatchery to learn more.

I had actually seen Kiwis before, on my last trip to New Zealand, in 1988. I was culturally backward in 1988, but even in those days I knew that Kiwis came from New Zealand, and somehow or other (there was no Google in those days) I found a place then where one could view the birds, in captivity of course, as they’re very difficult to see in the wild, being (a) shy and (b) nocturnal. The place operated 12 hours out of sync with actual time, so that daytime visitors entered a darkened environment in order to see the birds active. I have a clear memory of seeing at least one Kiwi, and possibly even photographing it, but that was nearly forty years ago, my memory has a habit of inventing things and I have no way of finding out if this is true until I get home and can look at the photos from that time. If I can remember where I put them.

So…today, then.

Jane had cleverly averted a major sulk on my part by ensuring I knew in advance that any sort of photography of the birds was not permitted. Kiwis are easily upset by unexpected light and noise, and I (grumpily) accepted that the centre had to be careful because most people (a) use phones, which emit a lot of light and (b) almost certainly have no idea about whether its flash will fire or not, therefore can’t be trusted. Armed with that foreknowledge, off we went.

The first challenge was finding the place. We had an address, but that turned out to be some kind of Māori-themed tourist trap. In the end, Google Maps gave us the place to find, the intriguingly-named Agrodome, which is not a Mad Max style cage fight but is actually a place themed around a family day out on the farm.

The Aardman theme continues once one gets there.

It’s actually quite the operation, running farm tours around what is quite a large area.

They have a variety of livestock, including sheep, goats and cattle. Sheep are their main focus; the gift shop and cafe is housed in the Woollen Mill, where they have an old carding machine

alongside the sales of Pure New Zealand wool in the shop.

They have a pig,

a Kunekune pig (“Kunekune” means “fat and round” in Māori). They also have an ostrich

which has many similarities to a Kiwi – flightless, grumpy and with very strong legs.

This similarity was pointed out on the guided tour that the National Hatchery operates. One is picked up at the Agrodome and taken by minibus to the hatchery centre.

The lass who drove our van was also our guide for our trip

and she did a very good job of explaining about the bird, its environment, its challenges and the role of the hatchery. She also emphasised that photography of the birds would not be permitted before leading us through to where they keep a few (currently three) kiwis in the same inverted time that I saw thirty eight years ago, switching day and night.  As it turns out, it was so dark in there that any sensible photography was simply not feasible anyway, so I didn’t miss out on a photo opportunity.

So: the Kiwi, then. It’s a weird, weird creature.

  • Its feathers are more like hair
  • It has whiskers like a cat
  • In many ways it’s more like a mammal. It has two ovaries; a low body temperature of about 38°C; and marrow in its bones (flighted birds’ bones are honeycombed and hollow to save weight)
  • It is very heavy, which is not a problem because it is flightless. Our guide passed around a couple of fluffy model Kiwis made to weigh the same as a chick and an adult and it was a real surprise: the adult female weighs around 3kg

It is thought to be the world’s most ancient bird, having evolved some 30 million years ago. It developed, of course, with no mammalian predators at all (only avian ones, like hawks or crows), so introduced animals such as ferrets and stoats have wrought much damage to the Kiwi population, and predate Kiwi chicks (though an adult will give a stoat a good kicking, apparently). Even hedgehogs are their enemies, since a hedgehog is not above making a nice proteinaceous meal out of a Kiwi egg.

Ah, yes. The eggs. They are enormous, compared with the bird in which they develop.

Somehow or other, a female Kiwi can develop an egg like that in about a week. An X-ray gives an extraordinary picture.

One wonders how uncomfortable it is for the poor bird to deliver it, but somehow she does, and she delivers it into the care of the male (with whom she is likely bonded monogamously). Then, because she hasn’t had anything to eat for a week because of the size of the egg, she goes off to find food, developing the while a second egg (from her other ovary), which she then also delivers into the male’s care. That is then her job done; she has no further interest in eggs or chicks at all.  The bloke Kiwi has to incubate these eggs for 80 days before they hatch. When they do, the chicks are basically fully-formed Kiwis who need no teaching about how to feed themselves, which is just as well, since the male makes no effort to teach them anything.

There are actually five types of Kiwi; the North Island has mainly Brown Kiwis, about 25,000 of them. The other types are: Rowi Kiwi, about the same size as a Brown Kiwi, but a greyer colour, and critically endangered with around 500 birds at the moment; Great Spotted Kiwi, the largest and toughest, spotted only on the South Island; Little Spotted Kiwi, which is, erm, small, and exists almost entirely in remote island colonies; and Tokoeka Kiwi, the Southern Brown Kiwi, which we might get to see later on this trip as it is not entirely nocturnal.

Unsurprisingly there were some stuffed kiwis for us to look at.  A male

The red tag is to allow tracking. If it’s not moving, it’s incubating an egg, which can be brought to the hatchery

and a female

To be absolutely certain in distinguishing one sex from the other it is necessary to analyse their DNA, but typically males are smaller and skinnier, and females larger and rounder. One can see their whiskers

and (if one looks very carefully) their nostrils, which are at the end of their bills, making them officially the birds with the shortest beaks in the world. It is possible to make a coat out of their feathers

and this would be for extremely high-ranking Māori. It takes a lot of birds to make a coat like that, and, these days, the species is under threat.  The National Hatchery exists to try to increase the chances of survival of Kiwi eggs. There are about 68,000 Kiwi left in all of New Zealand and the nation is losing 2% of its unmanaged Kiwi every year. The Brown Kiwi population is steadily declining by about 1-2% a year. Without ongoing support, experts estimate it will be extinct in the wild within two generations: only 50% of Kiwi eggs in the wild hatch; of those that do, only 5% of the resulting chicks survive to adulthood. The centre has overseen the successful hatching of nearly 3,000 eggs since it came into operation some 20 years ago.

The final part of our tour was to see the support the centre gives for hatching chicks. Eggs are located using a variety of tactics, such as tagging the males – if they’re stationary, they’re likely incubating – to locate eggs and bring them to the hatchery. They are carefully incubated, the chicks are microchipped, checked for health, measured and fed to bring them to the point where they are heavy and strong enough to withstand a stoat and so can be released back into the wild; they are then set free in the same region that the egg was found. This is not traumatic for either the male or the chick, since the former doesn’t care for the latter and the latter is pretty much ready for the wild and hasn’t imprinted at all on people during its time in the hatchery.  It’s a funny old business, but deeply interesting to learn about what they do and to find out how extraordinarily weird these creatures are.

That was our scheduled activity for the day. Rather than relaxing for the rest of it, Jane (of course) found Something Interesting To Do in the evening. That will be the subject of the next post. Heads-up – there will be a certain amount of photographic nerdery in it as well as some pretty pictures.