The Thermal Explorer Highway links New Zealand's Art Deco capital on the Pacific coast to the volcanic heart of the North Island. SH5 climbs from Hawke's Bay wine country over a forested range and across the volcanic plateau — a dramatic landscape transition in just 155km. The route ends at Lake Taupo, the crater of a supervolcano whose 232 CE eruption was the most powerful in 5,000 years, now a freshwater lake larger than Singapore, with the snow-capped Tongariro cones framing the southern horizon.
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