Woods Family New Zealand Adventure: Lake Taupo and the Waikato River

We recently returned from a 4 day trip to Lake Taupo, and we did our first kiwi camping. We bought a big tent, a small camping stove and a 'camping table and benches' because there are very few picnic tables at camping sites in NZ. The campground had showers, a kitchen to cook in, trampolines, playgrounds, 'bouncing pillows' (see Naysa below), sport courts, etc.

The campground we stayed in was the Lake Taupo Top 10 Holiday Park. If you actually want to go out and explore nature, do NOT take your kids here. You will never get them to leave the pool! There was a bar/kitchen like in a Caribbean resort, it was really warm (almost hot tub warm), and a really cool Grotto cave with a treasure chest 4m deep to challenge the kids to swim to the bottom of the pool. They also had a massive movie screen and played a movie everyday at 5pm. We could have spent the entire day at the pool every day and the kids would have thought it was the best holiday ever!

Once we managed to convince the kids to leave the campground we did check out some cool outside adventures. We did a mountain bike ride called W2K track and Headland Loop. We drove about 20 minutes to nearby Kinloch and biked up a very well maintained track to some incredible views of Lake Taupo.

The next day we hiked the Craters of the Moon geothermal park...

...and checked out Huka Falls on the Waikato River. We learned that the dams on Waikato River supply 15% of New Zealand's power!

On our last day in Taupo we took a guided kayaking trip on the Waikato River to 'the Squeeze'. Apparently it was featured on the bachelorette. Our guide called it 'New Zealand's most famous secret'. The area where we kayaked was a very active geothermal zone. Several little pockets of water were quite hot. We were told specifically not to get out of our kayaks as we could have burned our feet!

The squeeze trip was supposed to end in a 'hot flowing water fall'. Our guide said, 'well it's warmer than cold'. I guess it had rained for a couple of days prior in the area, so the water was cooler than usual. The poorly insulated Naysa shivered her way through, but in the end I think all the kids remember was how cool it was to sneak our way through the narrow gap in the cliff to a cool waterfall.