This time the round trip went to the southwest of Rotorua. There lies a completely different looking landscape than on the eastern coast, with high mountains of volcanoes and centrally Lake Taupo, which ultimately also forms the caldera of a supervolcano. So I drove from Rotorua towards Taupo, around it and finally also around Mt Ruapehu, the highest mountain of the North Island and back to Rotorua.