Five amazing things to do in Taupo, New Zealand

As the biggest lake in New Zealand, set amongst volcanoes and geothermal hot springs, Lake Taupo is pretty spectacular! It was my favourite spot on the North Island. The lake is just gorgeous. From the northern end, where we came in from Rotorua, on a clear day you can see right across to the snow-capped mountains in the Tongariro National Park. Including Mount Ngauruhoe, aka Mount Doom!

We spent four nights here and these are five wonderful things that we got up to:

1. Visit Waiotapu Thermal Wonderland on the way

This is on the way in if you’re heading south, or way out if you’re going north. In the middle of an active volcano, this place is full of by bubbling, steaming pools of sulphuric water and mud. It’s so bizarre! See my post on Rotorua for more info on this amazingly weird volcanic place.

2. Walk to the Huka Falls

You can drive straight to the Huka Falls lookout to enjoy this awesomely powerful waterfall. But we walked from the Spa Park. It was a two-hour return walk from there to the falls and it was so beautiful wandering along the Waikato River. The river was so blue! The bluest I’ve ever seen in a river I’m sure! It flows out of Lake Taupo so it’s crystal clear, and pretty chilly on the one finger I dared to dip in!

The Huka Falls themselves are where the river is squeezed down a narrow channel in the rocky riverbeds. It charges through there with massive speed and power, with 200,000 litres of water tumbling over the end every second! Pretty intense!

3. Swim in hot springs

There are loads of hot springs around Taupo and we enjoyed them both for free and by paying for them.

At the Spa Park, where we started and ended the Huka Falls walk, is where we had a free dip in the steamy water. About a five-minute walk from the car park, there’s a wooden bridge that goes over a little stream feeding into the Waikato river. This is the Otumuheke Stream, which comes from a hot spring and you can bathe here in the hot waters totally for free! There’s even a little waterfall to give you a free massage! This spot was super busy at the weekend when we did the Huka Falls walk, but we went back on a Wednesday morning and it was just us most of the time, it was lush! The top of the water is hot but in some places it’s pretty icy at the bottom. It was so fun!

We also paid to go to the Taupo De Brett’s spa and water park, which was great! We got entry half price as we were staying at the attached campsite, which was a pretty awesome deal considering we had discount on a site in the campsite through the CamperMate app! The park has open air pools filled with natural hot spring mineral water at varying temperatures. We couldn’t stay in the 40 degree pool or similar jacuzzi spa pools for too long but the other was perfect, especially as it was raining all day! There were also three slides, which we had a great laugh being kids on. The dragon slide was quite gentle and you sat up during it, but the other two tube slides were pretty quick! After discussing that being heavier gives you more momentum and therefore makes you faster on the slides, I came to the conclusion that this was why I was screaming more than all the children. Ha!

4. Check out the lake’s Maori carvings

Lake Taupo is massive and beautiful with its clear blue waters. You’ve got to get out on it if you’re here! We went on the Barbary sailing trip, which we got for a bargain $28 each through the discount website bookme.co.nz. Not bad for a 2.5 hr sailing cruise with hot drinks and biscuits included! I went for the mulled wine, yum! The boat was lovely and small with about 12 of us on board and it was so peaceful sailing around the beautiful ‘big puddle’ as our skipper Jamie called it. It was a mostly cloudy day but we had a few spots of sun, which was nice, and no rain! But it did get a little chilly so we got to wear these big water and windproof ponchos that acted like a blanket. Somehow George managed to get air in his hood and quadruple the size of his head. They were very sexy!

Jamie had lots of knowledge about the lake and about the carvings, which were finished in 1980 so a lot newer than I realised. But they had a lot of culture to them as the project was headed by a direct descendant of Taupo’s great Maori chief. The stories behind them were really interesting and they were beautiful. It was such a great trip and so relaxing.

Sunset over the lake from Four Mile Bay was also pretty special!

5. Visit Tongariro National Park

We hadn’t planned our timing too well and sadly the 19.4k Tongariro Alpine Crossing was closed to anyone without training for dealing with ice picks, crampons, and avalanches. In short, not us! Oh well, we’ll just have to come back during summertime hey!

The Tongariro National Park is beautiful and worth a visit anyway, though. We took a detour through it on our way to Wellington and the views across the bushy plains up to the mountains were just epic. Especially for Mount Doom/ Ngauruhoe, even with the top of it in cloud cover. We made a little stop off to wander down to the Tawhai Falls. The walk was only 10 minutes to get there and it was really beautiful. They weren’t hugely tall falls but there was a lot of water being chucked over them and it was so pretty in amongst all the trees. And they tumble into Smeagol’s pool from the Twin Towers! Very exiting stuff haha.

*Campsite tip:

The cheapest campsite (at face value ahead of any discounts) that we found was Wairakei Thermal Park at $17pppn. It was a pretty basic place but it was such a nice setting! It’s a farm with alpacas, goats, sheep, peacocks, rabbits, ducks and many chickens! All on a hill overlooking a little waterfall. It’s such a lovely place to spend a couple of nights!