January 29 - Taupo to National Park Village

To catch up on January 29:
So, I think I warned you about today's ride - it would be a challenge.  Well, it lived up to it.  108 kilometers, elevation gain of 1100 meters, 8 hours 'in the saddle' (pedaling), and a whole load of headwinds.  At the end of the day we were too bagged to do anything more than have dinner, watch a couple Overs of a crichet match (I'm a fanatic, eh) and hit the sack.

This first picture is of Lake Taupo as we pedalled around the shore.  Note the whitecaps - and at
this point the headwinds weren't too fearce.  I took this at a Holiday Park, hence the caravans.  I still say the lake shore resembles Penticton.

We're now fighting our way up the hills to Tongarira National Park.  I had mentioned the volcanic activity in the area.  In this photo the lighter gray material is a lava flow or ash deposit on top of the existing ground.

This shows the desolation of the area.  I understand that this is relatively young native vegetation on top of ash or lava.  This in in the Tongariria National Park, so I'm guessing it will be left to regrow naturally.  Unfortunately, we can see lots of invasive species - two prominent ones are Scotch Broom and Pampas Grass.

By the way, Laura planned this part of the trip so we could see the 3 mountains in the park that were used in the Lord of the Rings movies.  The bottom 1500 meters was all we saw.  Mount Tongarira is in the background of this photo (I was told).

This shot is the roadside vegetation.  In this case I think most of the species are native.

National Park Village was nothing spectacular.  It's of the "if you blink you will miss it" size.  There is a ski hill nearby, but most of the attraction in the summer is hiking on the 3 big volcanic mountains.  We stayed in a hostel here that was busy, so we got put into a 6 bed dorm.  Not so bad - everybody is getting up at 0530 or 0600 to go hiking, so we got up with them.  Luckily, nobody snored.

By the way, since we pedalled up there, we got the "carbon - friendly" rate, saving us a whole 6 bucks (NZ).  A lot of pedaling and sweat for that money!