Hangin' 'Round Lake Taupo

Hello, Tom here.  We spent this weekend local after a few consecutive travel weekends.  We'd always wanted to see the local Saturday market and there was a cafe on the north shore that we wanted to visit, so we did that with our Saturday.  Before we get to that though, the big news this week was....

JASPER LOST A TOOTH!  Here he is, happily showing his gap-tooth grin.

First thing we did on Saturday morning was head for the market.  It was very fun.

We bought crazy-colored carrots from Ohakune (carrot capital of New Zealand, of course - see giant carrot here), a traditional Maori bread called rewena, some fudge, and some puha (more on that later).

We also encountered a couple who had with them a couple of alpacas.  The woman of the couple was spinning the wool of the alpacas into thread right before our eyes:

We headed up to the north shore of the lake from there.  We live on the east coast, in a bay way in the northeast corner, and we'd never gone around to the north side of the lake before.  There is a well-known cafe there with an outdoor sculpture garden, so we ate a very nice breakfast there.

Evelyn was impressed with the hot chocolate.  A common accompaniment to coffee and hot chocolate around here is the small chocolate fish you see on the saucer.  It is filled with something pink that has the consistency of a Peep.  Not my favorite.

Here Aidan is outside warming his hands by the mosaic fireplace.

We ran into one of the only people I know in Taupo (this is a small place) and he told us about a walk down near Acacia Bay.  That's about where we were headed anyway, so we followed his advice and found this path entrance:

Can you spot Aidan?

The first beach we came to was very hard to walk on - many small rocks.

But the view across at the mountains was nice.

Next we came to bigger rocks to climb on:

Here is Evelyn looking across the lake at Mt. Doom, covered in snow (Sauron must be chilly):

More pretty views:

Boys, probably performing in a Beckett play:

One danger in the area is the boy-gopher.  Watch your step:

We stumbled upon this Maori carving.  Pretty scary in the jungle:

The last point we encountered had very large rocks and more nice views:

Jasper, shuffling, as he does every day:

 Aidan, challenging the gods, yet again:

Jasper's shadow even dances:

Aidan single-handedly stopped this sailing ship from smashing into the rocks:

And Jasper gave the sun its due:

It was a great hike and reminded us how much scenic beauty there is we haven't even explored yet just 10 minutes from our house.