Lake Taupo Hot Springs

Slight problem this morning.

That's a little better.

This morning we have our longest drive of the trip. We're driving four and a half hours to Taupo, which is a town that sits on what I think is the largest lake in New Zealand. There's supposed to be some volcanoes and stuff there too, but we have a long way to go between now and then.

We're making an early stop. We're like less than an hour into the drive. We're going to McDonald's not because we want anything from there, but because we need to charge electronics and upload a vlog.

But I get coffee because we need to buy something, right?

Yes. That is our tax for using their wi fi and electricity. Well, we have completely taken over this corner of McDonald's.

And while we succeeded in charging electronics, it does not look like any vlogs are getting uploaded. As much as we'd love to sit at McDonald's for 500 minutes, I don't think that's the best use of our time here in New Zealand.

Back on the.

So many cows.

We just made it to New Zealand's largest lake. We have been in the car for way too long. So we're taking a quick pit stop.

There's really pretty swans.

You look like an angel.

We are back on the road to Taupo and I have no idea if we're saying that right. Tupo T And we're gonna figure out what we're doing tonight.

We did a little research and decided that we were going to the spa. Nature spa.

I think we have about 30 minutes of daylight left.

We are currently here and we have to go all the way up here to where it says the natural hot springs are.

We're running out of daylight. No spot could be so dangerous.

Look at the steam. Come on.

Come here.

It's really hot. It's really awesome.

We found our own semi private pool.

This is the first time I ever been, like, out in International Monster. We tried to do this in Taiwan and it turned out like this.

We tried to do this in Tokyo and we weren't wearing any clothes.

Nate's braving it out in the cold water.

He thinks the cold water is cleaner than the hot water. I don't know why you get in the cold water when you have perfectly good hot water.

How was your experience in the hot spring?

It was good. I've always wanted to do that. It's a little crowded and there's a few people here. I don't think I've showered for a long time.

But other than that it was great.

It also would have been a little more relaxing if there weren't like five more of these signs.

We're not your average trusting travelers. I'd rather keep the small amount of things that I brought with me on this trip.

I will say the waterfall with the hot water coming down on my shoulders was exactly what I needed after the four hour car ride that's somehow turned into like at least six.

Was it six?

I would have liked to have filmed a little more at the hot springs, but it just felt super weird pointing a camera around at a bunch of people in bathing suits. I feel like that would have made a lot of people uncomfortable.

And now we're going to find our campsite.

And like most nights we will probably get there after dark because somehow we do that every time.

Just having too much fun during the day.

Use up every bit of sunlight we have.

There's nothing to do once the sun goes down except when you're camping.

Playing our little bitty van together.

We've taken being together to the max this week. We've been together 247 for the past hundred days and now we're really together.

Really together.

So annoying.

Just so everybody knows that we didn't just eat instant noodles the whole time. Tonight we're cooking ourselves a fancy vegetable pasta. Kara's chopping some garlic, got some peppers and onions going. We've already boiled a pot of noodles. It's gonna be delicious.

Sorry. Today's vlog was pretty uneventful. We basically just did a bunch of driving but we're going to try to make up for it because this is the most stars I've ever seen. And we have some kind of weird setting on our camera we've never used that's supposed to be able to capture it. So we're going to try that.