Tag 67-78 TAUPO, WAIKAREMOANA, NAPIER

After 2 weeks of sunshine, the New Zealand summer decides to balance it out with 2 weeks of rain, so we only see the second hand shops and the city museum in Taupo. The Alpine Crossing over the two biggest mountains in New Zealand and the film scenery for Mordor in Lord of the Rings will have to be done another time.

After spending one night at a crowded free campsite with festival vibes, we prefer to park next to a tavern and spend the rainy evenings playing darts and billiards.

We continue traveling east through the Te Urewera Reserve with beautiful untouched rainforest, on gravel roads with deep potholes and slippery curves. It's a true miracle that we all make it safely to Lake Waikaremoana. But due to the pouring rain (I have never seen so much rain consistently anywhere before!), we can't explore the surroundings here either and spend the day playing Monopoly and getting pulled out of the muddy field where we all got stuck, by laughing New Zealanders.

We continue to Napier, a larger city with beautiful Art Deco houses but a pretty ugly beach. We visit Ulli on his farm, get to pet goats and horses, and even get served a self-baked chocolate cake.

We visit museums and bars, get our ears pierced in the parking lot, and say goodbye to the rest of the group as we move into our house in Gisborne, where we will (hopefully!) work for a month to replenish our travel funds ;)

Sending hugs! I hope I'll manage to write more than one blog entry per month here, but we'll see...

Arrivederci <3