Lake Taupo and Jumping out of Perfectly Good Airplanes

I get up at the crack of dawn and there is thick fog blanking the hills around me obscuring the view. I don’t bother with making any coffee or food and fire Homey up and hit the road north. My destination is the great one day trek at the Tongariro crossing. This is supposed to be one the best or at least one of the most popular one day walks in New Zealand. It crosses over a active volcanic area and take about 6- 8 hr one way. I drive hard trying to figure out how I can leave Homey at one end and get myself to the other with enough time to due the walk before dark.

Well as it turns out with most of my traveling it takes far longer than I anticipate to cover the ground and I arrive at the finish point of the walk later in the morning that I had planned. There is nothing there but a Tour bus and a few parked cars. No way to get a ride to the start. I look at the map posted at the start of the track and It shows that I would have to walk the steepest part uphill for many hours before I reach anything interesting. I make the hard choice ( not all that hard really as the guide recommends that you do this track from the other direction) to not do the walk but carry on to Lake Taupo.

Lake Taupo is the largest lake in New Zealand. It is the result of a volcanic eruption and is considered quite young by geological standards. Bit of a punk teenager of lakes. But it is stunning none the less and reminds me a little of Lake Tahoe but maybe a little bigger. There is an island near the south west corner that was used to bury Maori Kings ( I found this out later). It is also one of the cheapest places on the planet to tandem sky dive.

So I decide that I can burn a day jumping out of a perfectly good plane and still have time to paddle out to that island. So as I near town I turn into the airport and find the Great Lake Skydive company or Freefall. For $409 (NZ) I would be strapped to a guy bigger that me (Dan) and then travel to 15000ft and then drop like a stone over the largest lake in the country. Sounds fun! That includes a DVD recording my jump, which was unreadable as it is in PAL not NTSC format.( I didn’t discover this until it was too late to go back.). What a rush!!!! Lucky that I have photographs of the event as well so I will have some record ( I hope that I can get the data reformatted to NTSC later). I swung my legs over the edge of the plane and then leaned out and the lean didn’t seem to end. I fell away from the plane but it didn’t seem like there was a plane anymore. I could see the entire lake and the mountains and the country side and it all seemed so perfect. After what seemed like an eternity I felt Dan open the chute and I could feel the straps biting into my legs as weight returned to my body. It took forever, it was over so quickly. When we landed I forgot to stand up and we tumbled on the ground. I don’t know why I didn’t stand up and run but it didn’t really matter. Afterwards I hung around and waited for the DVD to be finished. I talk to a couple of guys that are here from Australia on a surfing safari. I show them the pictures that I took of mavericks and asked them what they thought about their jump.

After we got to see the DVD I headed into town. I heard that about some Maori carvings that were about 6km from town around a point. I parked at the beach and paddled out to the carvings and was very impressed. The water was clear and pleasant. I had timed my trip as to make the return before dark so after taking photographs I paddled back around the point and headed toward town. But as I approached I noticed that I wasn’t quite sure where the beach was that I launched from. I was far enough away that I really couldn’t see where I parked Homey and so I tried to figure out where I parked the car. I paddled and strained my eyes to try and see the car. I look at the lay of the land to see if any of the landmarks I had picked were visible. But in the end I ended up picking the most likely spot and paddled to it. I figured that I could then turn right and then sweep the beach if I was wrong. But as it turned out I wasn’t too far off and spotted Homey under a tree right where I left him. As I was paddling up I met up with three paddlers just leaving for there Wednesday paddle. They invited me along but as I had just returned and hadn’t eaten a thing all day I declined and rolled into town.

Got some pub grub at this lively little pub . There were two guys that were playing all sorts of music. The started playing a song I know but the singer blew the lyrics. The playing was still good. I move outside to the courtyard and sit by a fire that dispels the gloom and warms my face. I stroll around the downtown area and look into the closed shops. Finally I need to find a place to sleep for the night before I make the last leg to Auckland.

I find a small parking lot on the beach and pull up to a large RV that is playing music and has a small fire burning on the beach. Were I meet three folks from Ireland (to be continued)