Aratiatia Dam - Damn Cool

We were driving from Napier to Whakatane, which is a silly drive since you either have to go all the way east via Gisborne, or all the way west, via Taupo.  We went through Taupo since it was only a 3.5 hour drive rather than a 4.5 hour drive.  Anyway, as interesting as all this is let's get to the main part of this rant.

We'd been tipped off by some seasoned NZ tourers that, when in the Taupo area, it's sweet to stop off at the Aratiatia Dam.  It's the first dam on the Waikato River as it comes out of Taupomoana (that's Lake Taupo.  I don't want to get into the "whys", "whos" and "hows" of it all, but what happens is that at 10am, 12pm, 2pm and 4pm every day the dam opens up and a big bunch of water is let through.  This turns a small stream into a freaky whitewater nightmare in a matter of minutes.

Here, just look at the before and afters.

This is looking from viewing spot #1:

And this is from the bridge, looking away from the dam.

It was free, and quite awesome.