In the morning we had a quick look at the bungee jump and the 1_km long zip line they had set up, despite the staff's best efforts to get us to do a jump we declined as we had something MUCH bigger waiting for us in Taupo. To get to Taupo we had to go via the desert highway. I never imagined New Zealand to have a desert but it does. Its not your typical sandy desert, instead its a barren volcanic plane where hardly anything lives. The road cuts though it passing by big banks of volcanic earth which were covered in ice and icicles, as the ice was melting I kept having to dodge mini land slides as they slid into the road. Mel missed most of it because she was buried in her new book obsession Fifty Shades of Grey. Great Lake Taupo is the size of Singapore and the biggest lake in New Zealand, unfortunately rain had set in for the day which ruined our plans of the prawn farm visit. So it was brew and Tim-Tam time. The park we were staying at had free hot pools so Mel made good use of them while I wrote this. Today was the day! Our sky dive! We'd been talking and telling everyone about it for ages and now it was time. Judging on the weather the previous day we thought it may be canceled but when we looked out of the window it was blue sky and no wind. We rang up to confirm it was still going ahead and before we knew it there was a white limo outside waiting to pick us up. If your doing something as crazy as sky diving why not do it in style. A short trip and we were at the air field, harnessed up and ready to go. We'd gone for the highest jump of 15,000^ft with pictures and a DVD to go with it at a cost of $499 each! Which is actually quite cheap in comparison to others. The plane was on the runway waiting for us, it was a bright pink one with glitter on it and as I was being strapped onto a bald blokes lap I wondered what I was getting myself into! It took us about twenty minutes to get up to the right altitude, we even had to have oxygen once we got over 8000^ft. There was four guys in front of me that were doing solo dives and as soon as the door opened they were out! Just leaving me to go first out of our group. I was fine up to the point the wind hit me in the face and whistled round the plane. My tandem master slowly edged me closer and closer to the door until I was hanging outside the plane, by this time I thought I'd best just go with it as I didn't have a great deal of choice on the matter. Before my brain had chance to realise what the hell was going on we were out and free falling. I went from 0-200_km/h in 8 seconds! That's over 14^ft a second and about 125_mph!! The feeling was amazing, I loved it. You don't feel like your falling, more like floating but at the same time its as if you've stuck your head out of a car window on the motorway! Then he decides to spin us round for a laugh, I didn't find it to funny though and he is lucky he didn't get my breakfast in his face! I still managed to have a look around from up there and we were so high you could see both the east and west coasts and even the curvature of the earth. The free fall only lasted 60 seconds and when we hit 4000^ft he pulled the parachute which I'm glad to say opened with no issues. Once the parachute is fully open you get a completely different feeling, its so calm and peaceful compared to the free fall and you feel like your flying. The landing went smoothly and I wanted to do it again straight away. It was only an hour since we got picked up and we were back in the camper having a brew and a well deserved Tim-Tam. We decided the best way to relax for the afternoon was to go prawn fishing at a prawn farm. We paid $20 each to get into the prawn farm where they have three thermally heated pools full of fresh water prawns and we got given bamboo rods with 6^ft of line on them, a small hook and a little cup of cubed meat. All you have to do is put a bit of bait on and chuck it in. Sounds easy, and we were thinking of all the meals we could have, with the tonnes of prawns we were going to catch, but the prawns had other ideas. They seem to have an uncanny knack of getting the bait off the hook without getting caught! So instead of being nice and relaxing it actually was very frustrating. We got loads of bites it was just hooking the things that was the tricky bit. We did eventually get the hang of it and caught seven prawns, hardly enough for one person. Just before we were leaving I hooked into a big one and after a struggle brought up a claw, it was a good eight inches but the bit we wanted was still in the water. It was a fun afternoon, if a little annoying, and we had seven of the worlds most expensive prawns. That night we concocted a plan to get back in the prawn farm for free the next day, so once we'd got up and showered we headed back to the prawn farm. Along the way we stopped off to have a look at the Huka Falls. Its not a very tall waterfall but its power is unbelievable, all the water that flows out of Lake Taupo travels down the Waihou river and gets squeezed though a narrow gorge producing the Huka Falls. There is enough water coming down the falls to fill six Olympic sized swimming pools every minute! We'd been given stickers when we went into the prawn farm, so we figured if we put the stickers back on we may be able to sneak back in for free and have another shot at them. Surprisingly, even though it was the same guy at the desk, we got back in and managed to catch another ten. Mel even caught a couple of massive ones with huge blue claws. So that evening we had spicy creamy prawn linguine.