"Taupo nestles among spectacular natural wonders," say the Lonely Planeteers. They're not wrong, but they're not giving you the full picture. Squatting on the shore of its eponymous lake, Taupo is a venus tourist trap, luring young and old with its lovely environs and dissolving their money away in its jetboats and skydives and tours and rentals and tourist bars.
And so we only spent one night in Taupo, hanging out with a few Swiss guys, a Scot and a Brit. I'm being overly dismissive here-- everyone I met there was friendly and genuinely wanted you to have a good time. But too much of the city seemed the result of calculated capitalism. Shiny and plastic. A guy named Vegas Brown played competent, uninspired covers to a drunkenly receptive crowd next door to the hostel.
To be fair, this was the weekend of the big A1 race, and it was trying to get its full Reno on for the drivers of medium-engined fighter jet cars. The race sounded like a cool system, actually-- a bit less powerful than F1, but similar, teams weren't fielded by sponsors but by countries. Lots of posters to be found of the Team New Zealand Black Beauty, powered by Ferrari. I thought seriously about watching a race for almost half an hour before I gave up the idea as silly.
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