Flying Pink Tin Can

May 28
During the 3 hour drive up to Lake Taupo, we phoned up and enquired into doing a sky dive. After much deliberating over different companies, we popped into one when we got to the airport, which was only 10 mins after finishing on the phone. Within another 20 mins they had persuaded to jump with them, stuck us in overalls and kit and bailed us into a tiny, yet very pink plane.

Are we going up in that?!

We barrelled along the runway and just about made it into the air. Considering it was such a still day, the plane was moving from side to side a lot (I would not like to be in this plane in any sort of wind). While they kept shoving the video camera in our faces, trying to capture us looking scared, they briefly described how we were going to make it down to the ground, hopefully not too flat.
First to go was James, he moved to the doorway shoved his feet under the plane, as the instructor strapped to his back pushed them both out, his shouts soon disappeared as he plumetted from view. Straight away without any delay it was Tracey's turn to be turfed out of a kind of perfectly good plane. As she left the plane the instructor thought it would be a good idea to do 2 backwards somersaults just to really make sure Trace was wetting herself! After that both of our instructors decided it would be funny to then spin us round and round and round as quick as they could. Trace didn't find this very amusing at all - and shouted at the bloke to stop as she wanted to be sick (you may get this bit on the vid!) Both the instructors then took this opportunity to explain to us how we were going to land - this basically involved lifting our legs, landing on our bums and sliding to a stop.

Incoming!

In a daze we finished our jump all in all from initial enquiry by phone to landing took under an hour - Mad!
After our free coffee/tea and T-shirt we headed off to the nearest bar to have proper drink and calm our frayed nerves.

May 29
After a freezing night in campervan, we had a day of walking. First stop of the day was Huka Falls. The Falls are formed by the river narrowing from 100m wide and 4m deep to 15m wide and 10m deep. This is due to the river passing some very hard rock which wears away very slowly. This makes for a very angry looking stretch of water.

Huka Falls

For the next 6km we walked up the cliff and along the top, following the river, passing many vantage points and therefore many photos.
The next stop of the day was a place called Craters of the Moon. Where steam rises out from the ground due to Geothermal activity. However, when we pulled into the carpark an elderly lady took much pleasure in explaining to us the park closed at 5.30pm, the walk took one hour, as it was 4.35pm we were not allowed to go in or even look - Park Rules you know!
So undeterred, we headed down to the Dam. This is where the water builds up during the day and was let out at 2.30pm. Apparently according to the signs this is quite spectacular. Our luck with timing really isn't with us today.
Again we followed the river along for a walk and enjoyed the sun setting over the river and hills.
After a couple of hours driving, we neared our next stop of Rotorua and found ourselves an available layby for the night.

Flying Pink Tin Can

Taupo, New Zealand