We started the day very slowly, as we knew we only had to cover 56k to get to the next stop so wasn't a massive rush. Checked out of the room, the hostel was nice enough to let us stay around and use the kitchen till whenever so we just sat writing the blog until about 2 in the afternoon, neither of us felt ready to go back to cycling knowing it was going to be another 7 days before we were back in a hostel.
Eventually we dragged our stuff together packed it up and left about at about 3 head town to Taupo to get one last look of the lake before we set off. Now about 4 we had to get ourselves into gear and get a shift on or else we weren't going to make it while it was still light.
We cycled round the lake on a cycle/walking path, it was a nice sunny day so there were a lot of families with prams and people out running making the going a bit slower. Once finally on the highway we didn't have much more success, the road was full of corners which curved round the base of cliff faces, leaving no hard shoulder or room for cyclists. It was trying to time going round the bends whilst not meeting a logging truck half way round.
Out the corners, it was about 1930 and we passed a beautiful lakeside campsite and got a lakefront tent pitch for £24, set up and soon we were in our sleeping bags getting frustrated with the sound of the waves, regretting how much cycling we had left ourselves for the day after having only covered 32k today.
