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The best water-based activities on and around Lake Taupō stuff.co.nz - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from stuff.co.nz Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
What to do in Taupō: hot pools, freak shakes and raw prawns
25 Feb, 2021 05:23 PM
5 minutes to read
NZ Herald
By: Eleanor Hughes
Immersion into the top pool, surrounded by rocks, at Wairākei Terraces Thermal Pools is slow the temperature is like a hot tap has been left on too long and cold needs adding. But after biking 31km on one of Taupō s Great Lake Trails, once I m in, it s bliss.
I sit on a ledge, most of me out of the water, watching steaming water spill over white silica terraces above the powder blue pool. Manicured native gardens surround three pools where maybe 10 other people soak. I m soon too hot and move down a level. It s too cool. The bottom pool is perfect. Steam rises where a waterfall tumbles over boulders hitting the surface like rain pelting a footpath. A dragonfly helicopter-hovers, fantails dart in the bush. Aches and pains melt away in the nearly two hours I soak; I only get out because if I don t, I ll fall asleep.