Now that this beautiful region has been awarded the “Keep New Zealand Beautiful Award” – as the BEST region in New Zealand – we will need to encourage tourists more on how to pronounce “Toe-paw”. This is all rather confusing. Everywhere else they are changing the names – i.e. National Park to Waimarino, etc. – but as Taupo already has a Maori name, they changed the pronunciation instead.

As you know, it is all a bit of fun or promotional propaganda to encourage tourism.

If it was genuine then Ohaupo would need to alter their pronunciation as well…

Many tourists miss Taupo altogether as the main north-south SH1 misses Taupo CBD completely as they are more focused on heading south to the world-famous Trout Fishing Capital of the World.

So now tourists and regular visitors refer to Taupo more and more as the “Gateway to Turangi”.

Just thought you should know…