Taupo

To fill in the gap from the last blog I have spent about 3 months working on a project titled "Statistical inference of Malagasy settlement history via molecular coalescence simulations". If you want to know more about that then God help you. Anyway after spending so much time in Palmerston North I felt like I should see some more of the North island before I left. I settled on going up to great lake Taupo in the centre of the island.

The place is supposed to be really beautiful... unfortunately the weather was not on my side and all the time I was there it was completely overcast, windy and rainy. This meant that there were not the fantastic views of the mountains across the lake that Taupo usually boasts.  Luckily the scenery was really a secondary reason for visiting Taupo. The main reason was to scare the crap out of myself in various different ways. The first was a 47 meter bungy jump. Notice the completely fake smile in the picture and the fact that I had rolled my sleeves up. The bungy is advertised as a water touch jump and I didn't want to get my jumper too wet.

They do say that they can't guarantee a water touch for everyone. The next picture is the one from the bottom of my jump; judge for yourself whether I "touched" the water...

So thanks to that I spent the rest of the day soaked pretty much from head to toe. I bought the bungy as part of a package deal that also included a ride in a helicopter and a jet boat ride and a sky dive. Unfortunately the bad weather struck again and my sky dive was cancelled. This was really annoying for me, though I am sure my mum was happier to know that I didn't do it. The other activities slightly made up for the lack of skydiving as they were far more interesting than I had anticipated. They gave us 2 different views of the Huka falls, New Zealand's most visited natural attraction.

So this will be pretty much the last entry for the North Island, I head south tomorrow hopefully to see some snow.