Day 10 Out & About in Taupō

After breakfast Jackie, Kirsty and I went to have a look around the Sunday Market held in the Northcote Reserve in Central Taupō. There were lots of stalls selling crafts and other home-made products, as well as lots of food outlets. We wandered around the market for an hour or so looking at all the wares on sale. I am trying very hard not to buy anything that will add to our already-too-voluminous luggage so I walked away from the market with only a small bottle of lavender oil. There were many more other things at the market that I could very easily have bought but I somehow remained unwavering in the face of that temptation. (Perhaps it has something to do with having to explain any such purchases to Michael!)

This enterprising and charming young man approached us with a very compelling pitch about buying fudge and then led us to to their stall where his mother told us that the fudge sales would enable a group of boys, including his two older brothers, to go on a week-long trip in April to attend the Jamboree. His smart salesmanship was even more impressive considering that he won’t be a direct beneficiary of a good outcome. We bought 3 packs of fudge for the worthy cause. Sheer altruism .. and maybe a chance to have a week of peace and being an only child for those few days?

In the afternoon we all went on a boat trip on Lake Taupō to view the Māori carvings in Ngatoroirangi Mine Bay.

Water is the driving force of all Nature. – Leonardo da Vinci

In 1976 a traditional Māori carver paddled past a 14 metre high flat rock in an alcove in the rocks alongside the lake and thought it would be the ideal canvas for a carved likeness of the tattooed face of his grandmother’s ancestor, Ngatoroirangi. The unusual carving was sculpted over four years by a team of 4 carvers and was left in its current almost finished condition in 1980. There are plans to complete it this summer, providing that the rock face is stable enough for the work to be done.

Surrounding Ngatoroirangi are smaller carvings which depict tupuna (ancestors) and kaitiaki (guardians) that are pivotal to the history of the local Māori.

All too soon we were heading back to our starting point. The boat trip helped to give us a better idea of just how huge this lake is! A series of cataclysmic eruptions at Taupō and other nearby volcanoes some 1,800 years ago created the large collapsed volcano (caldera) that the lake now occupies. It covers the remains of several volcanic craters, notably those of the dormant Taupō volcano in the northeastern portion of the lake, and it has a depth of about 160 metres at its deepest point.