taupō
Watch the full episode exploring Lake Taupō on SBS on Demand now.
In all my research for our amazing NZ season, Taupō kept popping up as one of the most exciting places to film an episode. Apparently, according to my findings, Taupō is the place that people from NZ holiday more than anywhere else in this beautiful country…What? This can’t be true. But then we stayed there for a week and filmed an incredible episode.
The first thing that really blew me away was the size of the lake. It’s huge and surrounded by towering volcanoes on the skyline that fall into mountain ranges and roll down to the edge of the lake, with water so pure it’s rated the fourth freshest in the world for a lake this size. It’s more than 220 kms in circumference, so a super solid day in the saddle if Vandy and I decided to ride around it. We didn’t….
The town of Taupō is a true tourist town, with heaps of motels along the lakeside, a buzzing town centre and a funky little harbour. The bike track that runs along the edge of the lake leads directly to one of our most favourite places in Taupō – the 2 Mile Bay Sailing Club, a super cool bar, right on the beach (the only beach on Lake Taupō) where we seemed to end up at the end of every day to enjoy the sunset, sitting on chairs, on the sand looking across the lake. This episode truly had it all. Being a lake, and being so vast, getting about on a boat is obviously a good idea, but getting driven on a boat to ride the Kawakawa to Kinloch (K2K) Trail as part of the great lakes trail was next level cool. Jumping off our water taxi, doing bombing competitions, into the crystal clear waters of the lake, MTB strapped to the top of the boat, then edging so close to a waterfall that both Vandy and I were saturated made Taupō immediately unique. The K2K Trail was so incredibly cool, so beautifully made and so wonderful to ride. Once dropped off at Kawakawa Bay, we entered what felt like a cave with the deep native forest as the cave walls. The trail itself was Grade 2 so super easy for anyone to ride. The trail follows the incredibly beautiful coastline of the lake and has some amazing views. We rode onward to Kinloch where we glamped for the night – on the side of a hill overlooking the entire lake. Stunning.
With an episode filled with so many exciting moments…like my first ever bungee jump, to going full noise on a jet boat, driven by a total unit who called himself Chopper and drove us right up to the very bottom of the Huka Falls (where 300,000 litres per second cascade down), it’s hard to nail down exactly what was the best. That’s the thing with Taupō . It had so many of the adventure activities that NZ is famous for, but also had another level of beauty because of the sheer size of the lake and the fact it’s ringed with volcanoes and cliffs.
The Huka Falls Jet takes you right next to the incredible falls.
The riding was outstanding, starting with the 30 odd kilometre Rotary Ride that kicks off in Taupō and takes in the mighty Huka Falls, hot springs and is easy enough for anyone to roll around, to the Crater MTB Park, a hand cut XCish old school park with lovely dirt, easy climbs, a couple of flows and an amazing fern forest trail with a thermal waterfall. Right after the Craters ride we went to the most wonderful Wairakei Terraces, a tiers hot spring that was both very large and very good. For some reason every time Vandy and I dipped into a new pool, everyone else in that pool would leave. Very strange.
Vandy and Deetz catching fish on Lake Taupō with Chris Jolly adventures.
We fished, we ate, we rode, we laughed. Then we rode some more. Taupō is truly wonderful and for anyone who’s planning a trip to Rotorua, make sure you drive the easy 40 minutes to Taupō , and spend a couple of days in this paradise.
