We strolled round Napier on Saturday, looking at and photographing many of it's art deco buildings. After a while, feeling a bit deco-ed out (thank God we didn't actually live in the 30's - God, a decade of deco what a thought...) we fell into a cracking Irish bar and had a nice lunch and a bit of Guinness. Feeling suitable refreshed we managed to find a new leatherman (hooray) which cost about the same as the hotel gave us back so that was OK. The weather took a turn for the worst so we headed back to the campsite. Jen stopped to stroke an adorable puppy which sent it's owners (two straggly teenagers wearing hooded tops - need I say more...;) ) into a fit of rage. They promptly left KFC and followed us all the way back to the campsite. He looked suitably enough nutter-esque for us to cross the road a couple of times, and stop at a couple of shops to try to shake them off but it didn't work. In the end as we turned the corner for the campsite we legged it and they didn't follow!! God and Jen was only trying to be friendly for godssake...if you leave your puppy tied to a lmap-post that's what you get!

Onwards and upwards to Taupo - home of the famous crater lake. In 186 AD one of the largest ever volcanic eruptions occured here in NZ and it created Lake Taupo - some 18 by 25 miles. In parts it is 250m deep, and when a storm hits 3m waves are considered normal. This afternoon we took a trip out in 'Barbary', skippered by Bill Dawson - who's lived in Taupo for most of his 61 years. In that time he's seen the town grow from just 700 to 22,000 people. The 80km trip to Rotorua took 5 hours when he was a kid, now it takes just over an hour. The boat itself is a 40ft ketch (2 masts) built in 1926. A certain Mr Errol Flynn once won it in a game of cards and then presumably used it as some kind of floating harem. For Bill it's been a bit of a labour of love as he bought it as a wreck back in 1976 (for $3,000 - about 1,000 quid) and then took 7 years to restore it before starting up trips to the Maori carvings (quite nice but not worth the admission fee alone) when the tourist thing caught on in Taupo. The wind wasn't really strong enough for a sail so we motored along and he shared some interesting tales and listened to ours and those from others. All in all it was a great couple of hours and worth stopping here for.

We're heading back up to Wai-O-Tomo tomorrow - which is near Rotorua before retracing our steps and crossing the desert road south towards Palmerston North and Wellington. We're hoping to find a (cheap) company that will take us out for a bit of fly fishing as the trout here are exceptional apparently (if they were that exceptional they surely wouldn't get caught...?)