Saturday started in a frenzy of activity as the tour manager packed for us to be away for a week and could only take two small bags. This generally was fine but it is always best to avoid contact whilst it was going on, In the kitchen things looked fairly similar as food was packed both into a large cardboard box and into a freezer box. By half past ten peace had been restored and we were off in th car for our journey. The first part of this was to Napier some two hundred kilometres away and one thought it wouldn't take too long, but you forget the bends and the slowness of the roads, no dual carriageways, and often an speed limit of fifty or eighty.
We had a picnic lunch beside a beautiful lake before arriving in Bay View just outside Napier to fill up with petrol and move on to Taupo. The climb up from the coast was wonderful huge panoramas of mountains in the distance, low clouds, green high land pastures and remote sheep stations.
Our arrival inTaupo coincided with the end of the round the lake cycle race, which mean that Taupo was absolutely full of people. There was certainly no rooms available at any of the hotels. We had a coffee in a small restaurant and replanned our night stop. As we moved around the lake to Turaguangi where we found a small motel which had a room.
We decided to explore the town which took all of fifteen minutes and then we went to the local pub where we had a beer before leaving to go to the supermarket to get a cooked chicken for tea. The scenery around Lake Taupo is spectacular, Hugh hills surround a large inland lake so that the views are wonderful. The drive itself was very worthwhile although it has to said it does take far longer to get anywhere than you imagine.