The travelled sybarite in luxurious warm mineral baths has a new pleasure in store for him should he ever discover a certain hot spring on the north shore of Lake Taupo. The charm of it lies in its setting as much as in the delicious “feel” of the waters. It is a shallow rock tank of light-blue water, ever renewed by a constantly boiling spring that bubbles up in the rocks under the pumice cliff about a mile down the east coast of Taupo Moana from Taupo township. There is no bathing spring just like it in all the Wai-ariki country. A little beyond it is the glistening white beach of Waipahihi Bay, below a Maori village.

This bath, called Taharepa, is open to sky and lakeside. One can lie at ease there and lazily watch the ripples creaming on the beach; see even the yellow steam curl drift from Ngauruhoe volcano and the ice and snow of Ruapehu flash in the sun fifty miles away. The Maoris long ago carved a head-rest at the shore end of the bath. You can take a nap there, lapped in the soothing waters. A little low rocky point runs out close by, and on its edge, near the water, is a graceful kowhai tree which just about this time of the year should be covered in golden blossom. It completes the scene, and is prettier than any picture.