Cycle: 67km

After a good nights sleep and no beer we were feeling much better when we got up! Our first day really back on the bikes started at a leisurely pace, stopping at the bank and for an excellent coffee at the "Steaming Bean" within the first 5km!

The journey was fairly easy with a bit of cloud cover to keep us cool. We had lunch down by the side of Lake Taupo in a quiet spot, enjoying the view. I was a bit nervous about this stretch of the State Highway 1 as it's the main trunk road down the North Island, and a lady was killed on her bike a couple of weeks ago. The traffic was fairly light, however, and we safely made it to Turangi.

Claire was very keen (and Scott secretly happy also) to go to Trout World (The "National Tongariro Trout Centre"). This was a few kms further down the road and well worth a visit. We learnt all about trout catching, hatching, rearing and releasing! There were some huge ones that an excited little boy was feeding (he was in "Trout Heaven") and a glass wall into the river where we could see them up close (they're a bit ugly really!)

By a strange stroke of luck I forgot the camera lens cover which meant that we had to go back, and then got rained on. Lucky? Yes, because we would have been camping, but the rain made us decide to stay in a hostel! The hostel was the Extreme Backpackers which was mega! There was a climbing wall which we had a go on and we cooked in the nice kitchen and had a night-cap of hot chocolate whilst attempting the crazy, wild, mega jigsaw that was the 250 piece New Zealand Mega Forest World-type thing! It even had 16 bits missing, and about 234 extremely faded pieces for added fun! Hurray!

Mmmh, sleeping in a bed! We've only been camping for 2 nights!