29.12 Lake Taupo, Rotorua, cool, windy, 15 degrees, 80km

After breakfast by the lake (very beautiful and icy cold, but two boys still go swimming in the water) we drive to the city to visit the library and the visitor center. Taupo is crowded with tourists. From the lake we have a view of the snow-covered Mt. Rhanganui. Traffic jam and crowds of people. We don't stay long. We go to the Huka Falls (the color of the water is incredible), a natural spectacle with about 250,000 liters of water per second rushing through a narrow gorge. After the Huka Falls, we drive to the nearby dam that opens its floodgates every day at 4:00 pm and releases a massive amount of water. We pass by New Zealand's largest geothermal power plant, with a capacity of 1.5MW (enough to cover 5% of the population). Then we continue driving to Rotorua, where we arrive around 7:00 pm. We find a nice place to stay by Lake Rotorua on a peninsula next to a bird sanctuary.