A toast to Taupo

By STEVE SOLE

What the smug spectators see is a fool on the end of a rubber band plummeting into the Waikato River. My experience is different. Poor fool me is shouting, "I've changed my mind - I want to live!" but it comes out as an endless, unintelligible scream.

The fool feels vulnerable, as you do when you play chicken with a planet.

And then, at fear's crescendo, life inexplicably suspends itself. The deafening rush of air quietens, leaving me in absolute silence. The blinding light of my fast-forward descent turns black. The gravity sentencing me to an ugly and public death stops. Just like that.

I was so disoriented in some kind of physics-free void that I didn't realise I was up to my waist, head first, in the Waikato River, until the bungy cord reached its zenith and, in its relentless fashion, flung me out of that silent womb and tried to land me, like a hapless trout, back on the platform 47m above, from where I had voluntarily jumped a lifetime ago.

After that, you bet I wear the T-shirt. Fiona Poppe, nicknamed Freddy, handed it to me with my Certificate of Courage. My jump number reads 93,702.

And that sounds like the number of revs the Huka Jet is at when our driver, Rusty, throws it into a 360-degree spin. My feet push against the floor, I white-knuckle the handrail, and in one gut-wrenching moment, the modified 496-cubic-inch, 8.1 litre Chevrolet engine spins the boat around in its own length.

Ron and Maynard Glover from England, their daughter Ena, and their two grandchildren, Michael and James, are screaming for less - or more, it's hard to tell. We get more.

This must be a terrifying trip for anyone who has trouble parking a car and is paranoid about hitting other vehicles, because Rusty hurls the jetboat at jet-speeds to within a breath of every obstacle he can find on the Waikato River between the Aratiatia Dam and Huka ("foam") Falls. Rusty says he has been "flying the Huka Jet for more than 18 months and I never get tired of visiting Huka Falls". They are 5km downstream from the 65,000ha, 186m-deep Lake Taupo.

Every second, the Waikato River drains 300,000 litres from the lake and forces it into a 15m-wide cutting for 230m, before spewing it over the 10m-high Huka Falls - and reminding our puny jetboat just who is boss.

The same can be said for the nearby Craters of the Moon. The earth here is so pockmarked with steaming vents, collapsed craters and boiling mud pools that you know who would come off second if you left the wooden walkway.

Orakei Korako translates to Place of Adorning and is thought to have originated from the Maori women who preened themselves in the hot "pool of mirrors" at the bottom of the 36m Ruatapu Cave.

That night, I tried to soak up some beauty in the Taupo Hot Springs, but I haven't noticed any improvement. It's this kind of thermal activity that has attracted visitors since Taupo was founded in 1869. And some stayed.

In 1945, there were only 750 residents. Ten years later that number had risen to 2800. That swelled exactly 10 times by 1991 and now there are well over 30,000 Taupo-ians. That's an annual growth rate of 2 per cent. Why?

The Taupo District Council's Prospectus reckons, "the natural environment has always been an underlying attraction".

That was certainly the case for Colin and Catherine Lewis who moved there from Auckland two years ago. Colin was sitting in another Auckland traffic jam just after his 60th birthday and, he says, "I suddenly thought of all the pleasant times I've had down this way: fishing, golf, skiing, what have you.".

Within a fortnight, the Lewises had bought a house in Taupo. Now, Colin says, "If I'm in town at five o'clock, I don't have to worry about getting in a queue of traffic to get home." Catherine has taken up golf.

The authoritative golfing magazine US Golf Digest ranks the Wairakei International Golf Course No 17 among courses outside the United States and Canada.

David Park, one of three golf professionals at Wairakei, explains it is one of the few courses in New Zealand that was designed as a golf course from scratch. The 6414m from championship tees, 108 bunkers and a recent $2 million upgrade, including fairway irrigation and 8km of cart track, makes Wairakei an outstanding course.

It is open 365 days a year and, as Park says, "It's all about risk and reward, and this course will challenge the very best."

The only thing challenging about sailing with Bill Dawson is convincing him not to go back in. He makes it a breeze. He has been sailing Barbary, a 13m wooden yacht built in 1926, on Lake Taupo for close to 20 years. When I told him I sailed with him about eight years ago, he laughed and said, "Same trip - same jokes."

I didn't remember "You can't see the mountains today because you didn't pay enough" or any of his one-liners and continual banter. I steered the yacht, others hoisted sails, we all drank coffee, ate cookies, saw the Maori rock carvings, and laughed a lot.

And as I ask Bill if he catches many trout, the reel whirls and within a few minutes we have landed a descendant of one of the trout that were released here more than 100 years ago.

These days, 63,500 anglers land more than 100,000 trout larger than 45cm every year, making Lake Taupo one of the top wild trout fisheries on earth. And another reason why Taupo remains a popular destination.

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