Beware of Cyclepaths!

Beware of Cyclepaths!
Taupo, New Zealand

Taupo, New Zealand

Taupo is a pretty little tourist town, surrounding Lake Taupo which attracts tourists in their masses wanting to skydive over the lake. The lake was once home to a huge volcano, around 26,500 years ago Taupo volcano experienced one of the most violent eruptions in the world, ejecting magma and ash that covered much of North Island up to 200 meters deep. The lake now sits in what is called a Caldera, which is different from a crater as it is actually formed by a land collapse when the magma crater below the volcano empties.

We however came to Taupo not to throw ourselves out of a plane or become more acquainted with its volcanic routes, no we came here to get a selfie with the Big Bike.

We programmed Tom Tom and set off to get our picture. Having looked up the bike on Google, it looked amazing and we were certain that we couldn’t miss it so we were super surprised when we drove to the location and couldn’t find any trace of a giant bike. When I went into google to check we had the right location I was devastated to read an article about how the bike had been removed as vandals had set fire to it…. What, are you telling me there is no big bike selfie to be had in this town?!

Hmm, most disappointed we decided to take a photo of us looking sad next to the bikes platform. Seriously what psychopath takes pleasure in burning down big bikes?!

Not wanting to waste our visit we did manage to squeeze in a trip to the Hukka Falls a pretty cool waterfall where jet boats carrying thrill seeking tourists regularly crash into the surrounding rocks!

Not keen on picking up any spinal injuries we headed to the slightly safer tourist attraction of a local honey shop and whiled away at least half an hour trying to find the queen bee in the see through hive and tasting every honey in the shop and trying every honey product before selecting the cheapest pot of honey I could find to buy, I really am such a hobo these days.

Our next stop if we were travelling sensibly around NZ would be a quick hop across to the coast to Napier, however there is rarely anything sensible about our routes so we are going to drive twice as far as necessary to get to Napier as we need to get some selfies with big things along the way, next stop Ohakune for the Big Carrot.