Ancient Maori carvings…well…maybe…

Taupo City sits right on, you guessed it, Lake Taupo, a huge natural reservoir formed squillions of years ago from volcanic explosions, and is famous for being full of trout. By the bucket load. And I can see why, it’s crystal clear! You can see the bottom as you’re sailing over it, amazing!

There are some maori carvings on the side of a cliff half way around the lake, so we took the Ernest Kemp, a replica steam boat out onto the lake to go take a look…

they looked really good and we were wondering how they managed to get out here to carve this face so well, and there were other carvings that were just as good here too…

We thought these were really tribal and very historical, right up until we were told that they were actually carved in 1978! Well I guess they’re going to be ancient one day!

We then sailed back over the lake in the evening sunshine, lovely :)

Tomorrow we should be off to the Tongariro National Park for some stunning mountains, including Mount Doom! Sauron beware, the ring man-bag bearer is near!