Holy Moly Adventures!: Tomato Sauce isn't always what it seems...or Aquarius is down for the count.

Spending time in Taupo has been lovely. Sunny skies, the wonderful company and hospitality of Farideh and Andrew, beautiful hikes and scenery, and yummy dinners.

Speaking of dinners, after a botched climbing day where Nolan and I walked about 10 miles to and from a crag where we could only find two moss/spider covered slab climbs, we wanted a quick meal. We decided to cook up our usual tuna pasta, so I sent Nolan to the "dairy" (NZ word for corner store), for some canned tomatoes or tomato sauce. When he returned, I was knee-deep in Beyond Teaching emails, so he cooked up the whole sauce. When I went over to check it out, it smelled a bit off...so we took a taste and discovered that it was very similar to ketchup. We called Andrew over to check it out, and after reading the can more thoroughly realized it WAS in fact ketchup! Nolan felt only kinda like a dork (even though it wasn't his fault!). Botched climbing day, botched pasta sauce...in the end we cooked up some veggies with pasta instead :).

Also on our way back from our 10 mile hike, we noticed the car was acting funny. Apart from the cons we've already listed, the gears weren't quite catching, gas was decreasing at an alarming rate, and it would take about five minutes to start. We decided to take it to a mechanic the following morning and left it there for a diagnosis. The auto shop called us later saying that they had seen the exact same car two weeks ago! It needed a tune-up, new gaskets, and a patched up exhaust leak. Apparently, Tom, the German pre-owner, had been told to fix all this but did not...leaving us to front the $400 bill. At least now we can justify selling it back for more than we bought it!!

While Aquarius was in the hospital getting fixed, we climbed Mount Tauhara, where Nolan, Farideh, and I ate beef sandwiches and admired the 360 degree view of Lake Taupo and surrounding areas. It was beautiful!! Then we went to Huka falls and were amazed by the blue/white water flying through a natural chute to spill out in a glorious waterfall. That too was beautiful! Later we chilled on the beach with some Tui beer (Tui is a bird here that has a beautiful whistling song), followed by a home-cooked meal of green-lipped mussels (humongous!), lemonfish (a.k.a. shark), and israeli couscous. Yum!