December 22nd Taupo - Wai-O-Tapu

The views from Kauri Point are amazing - I'd love a house like this one! Gail and Robert are really welcoming too, and the house is lovely. So are the gardens...
Today we went to Wai-O-Tapu; one of Rob's I-really-want-to-go-there places. Basically, it's all geothermal stuff, and remarkably smelly in places. But fascinating - some bits were really beautiful, some were totally weird, and some were quite scary, like the hole where you could hear water boiling away at the bottom of it, sounding like a Victorian pumping station, it was so loud.
It was hot and sunny, and the trees were full of noise from the weta, the native cricket-like insects. The greenery was all soft sage greens and greyish-brownish bark - olive grove colours. Loads of people there, and lots of Chinese and Japanese and other far eastern tourists, all holding up umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun. I had factor 30, and Tilley, my hat!
Birds so far, especially for Fiona - Pied Stilt (see photo below), and two more I managed to identify from a bird book here, but saw in Auckland - Domenican Gull and Red-billed Gull. Apart from the bird, yesterday's photographs are all of geological formations...