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Published: March 16th 2010
I had been lucky to pick the last sunny day for my Mail Boat trip in Picton as the weather closed in and I ended up in a freak tornado in Wellington. I got over the trauma by doing some marvellous wine and food tours in Napier.
I had a peaceful morning wandering around the shops in Picton, including a bead shop where you could buy all the elements and then sit and build your own jewellry with the help of the shop assistants. It was a very pretty shop with bottles of beads in the full rainbow of colours and loads of already made-up necklaces and bracelets. I imagine it would have been a wonderful place for young girls to hold their birthday parties. I went in to buy a simple black cord-style necklace as an alternative to the chain I have for the silver pendant that I bought in Laos and got one made up to my exact requirements for seven bucks. Bargain.
I also saw the huge Irish wolfhound in the back of a SUV belonging to the Irish Bar - he kept moving so I couldn’t get a particularly good shot of him and I
was not sure if he was too big or the car was too small as when he stood up he actually had to bend down to fit into the boot. The rain and a really gusty wind started at lunchtime and by the early evening was at storm force, so I stayed in the hostel and cooked pasta and worried what the crossing would be like on the Interislander from Picton to Wellington.
Thankfully the storm had disappeared by the morning and as I was walking to the ferry I got a text to say that the departure was delayed by 45 minutes. I had forgotten that I had to lug all my stuff for a long way at both ends of this journey and had a full and heavy bag of food as well as my daysack (full of books and my laptop) and my case (full of manky stuff I cant bring myself to throw out even though I am also carrying replacements).
I met a group of farmers and their wives on board from the North Island who were on a bit of a busmans holiday, having been on a tour of farms similar to
their own on the South Island and I was given lots of information about sheep, which made the first half of the trip pass quickly and the second pass interminably slowly, as there is only so much sheep stuff you can absorb with an interested look on your face. Did you know that when sheep huddle together when its hot and sunny its not because they are dumb, its because they create a mini thermal airflow system with the heat rising off the combined mass of the flocks backs and causes a cool draft that feeds underneath them and keeps their legs and stomachs cooler, where they have less wool covering. Who knew !
After docking in Wellington I had to get a shuttle bus to the railway and then a town bus to a street near the hostel. It was a real pain heaving all my luggage up and down steps on the buses and I was knackered by the time I arrived. My mood lightened when I saw that I had a view directly into the fire station from my bedroom window and got even happier when I realised how lucky I had been to catch the
early morning ferry as the weather decided to throw a complete wobbler and we had the most incredible storm with tornado winds and lashing rain.
Just before it started I was sitting in the dining room chatting at a table underneath the central skylight. All of a sudden the whole room went silent as it turned pitch black, almost as if a UFO had flown over the top of us. We looked out of the windows but the rain was so heavy you couldn’t see more then a few inches and people started to rush in, in a shocked and very soggy state from outside. Eventually we could see further and watched people running in all directions, many having to slalom, dodging flying rubbish bins, huge plastic pallets from the supermarket over the road and all other kinds of flying debris. We were opposite the fire station and the engines were regularly flying past with the sirens blaring.
A couple of hours later when I was meeting up with an old friend, it was still raining and gusting heavily so we had to put on waterproofs and run to the nearest bar - we were soaked in seconds.
After we had had couple of drinks we decided to brave it to run to a restaurant and were surprised that the storm was all over and it was peaceful again. The whole rogue storm came and went within five hours. According to the newspapers the following day, it caused considerable damage and the emergency services had one of their busiest nights this year. Glad I wasn’t on the ferry.
The freaky thing was that the next day was glorious, with blue skies, no wind and lovely sunshine. I had heard from a fellow inmate, sorry I mean guest at the hostel that there was a triathlon in the city and was pleasantly surprised that it was being held close by so I wandered down to watch some of the cycle stage. I had a lovely stroll all the way along the waterfront to the other side of the city where I tried to buy some new trainers, as mine will shortly disintegrate. Unfortunately every pair I tried caused me to howl in pain as I have a nasty and inflamed sand-fly bite on my heel, just where the stiffest past of the trainer hits and it was very
painful. I think the salesgirl thought I was a complete head-case.
Talking of strange people, I saw Blanket Man several times on both of my trips through Wellington. He is a bit of an institution in the city and is pointed out by the tour guides on passing coaches. He sits on a blanket with nothing on at one of a variety of different major junctions and road crossings in the city centre, depending on his mood and “interacts” with passing pedestrians. If its cold he wears his blanket, which he was on the night of the storm when we passed him sheltering in a shop doorway. Most of the time however its been blazing hot and he has been naked. I have included a tastefully framed photo of his back for you.
We had a long day of travel from Wellington to Napier in the Hawkes Bay region, half way up the East coast. The journey took us through a wide range of countryside from steep forest-covered mountains down to wide valleys full of fruit farms and vineyards. Our first stop was at the Mount Bruce Wildlife Centre where you could see many of the native NZ
birds or do a forest walk. It also served great cooked breakfasts, so most of us opted for a fry-up. Not long after this our next stop was at the Tui Brewery. You could have 3 full glasses of different beers for only a couple of dollars but I really couldn’t face it a that time of the morning, so I sat in the sunshine in the beer garden chatting to the people trying to get their drinks down in the 20 minutes allowed for the stop. I noticed quite a few water bottles on the coach had been filled with beer, so I guess most people failed the time challenge but had the sense to take some of the excess with them. There was a small Tui Beer Museum to wander around, including a display of some of the great marketing posters through the last decade.
We stopped later at a fruit and veg shop that also did really great Real Fruit frozen icecreams, using an old machine that would not have looked out of place on an episode of Happy Days. The lady put a scoop of home made vanilla icecream into the machine with a scoop
of your choice of home-grown frozen fruit and the machine clanked, whirred and spit out the most amazing soft, tasty, soft icecream full of fruit flavour. I chose boysenberry as we don’t see many of those in the UK and it was lush, but there was a wide range of other fruits on offer such as kiwi, strawberry, melon, etc.
We arrived in Napier in the late afternoon at the hostel that was well placed overlooking the sea only a few blocks from the tourist office and town. It was really hot and there was no wind and my room was like on oven as it faced west and was in full sun. If I hung out of my bedroom window I could actually see the sea which was nice but I was hugely disappointed when I went down to the shore. Although the sea was a lovely blue and the public areas along the shore were well laid out and attractive there was nothing nice about the beach itself. It consists of large grade black gravel and looks as if somebody is about to lay a six lane motorway on top of it. There are golden sand beaches
further along the coast, but this part by the town centre too close to the four rivers that end nearby, feeding tons of gravel into the sea and subsequently onto the shore. It was quite a shock as nobody had mentioned the rough black beach to us beforehand.
To add insult to injury the “beach” was covered in tons of driftwood that had been swept down the rivers earlier in the year after record-breaking levels of rain had caused torrential flows, sweeping thousands of fallen trees down into the sea. A recent storm had thrown all these logs and detritus onto the shore. The seafront walk was very nicely laid out though, with vibrant flowers and good walking and cycle paths. There was a tasteful Millennium marker celebrating the fact that as the most Easterly town in New Zealand (on this side of the dateline), Napier was the first place in the World to see the dawn of the new century and continues to be the first to see the daily sunrise.
The beach is really the only thing wrong with Napier, as the rest of the things on offer here are top notch, with the art deco
architecture being is main claim to fame. There was a bad earthquake in 1931 and the whole town had to be rebuilt - actually it was the strongest earthquake in New Zealand, measuring a giant 7.8. By this time there was quite a bit of money in the area and they quickly rebuilt the town using the finest designs of the time and using concrete instead of wood. This has produced a town stuffed with marvellous domestic and public buildings and is recognised as the art deco capital of the World as its a bit like Miami’s South Beach on steroids. Everywhere you look there are fine examples of the decorative features of the period and you don’t really need to do one of the organised tours to see it all.
The other great things on offer from my point of view were wine, cheese, olives, icecream, schnapps and chocolate. All of these are prolific in the area and there are many tours to sample them at various locations throughout the area. I decided to book two half day tours, one mainly about wine tasting and one all about food. On the wine tour we visited four vineyards and
tasted 6-8 wines at each.
The first stop was to the oldest winery in town, The Mission, which originally had been a seminary where Catholic priests were trained and the wine was only produced for sacramental purposes. The building was gorgeous and had been moved there from its original site which used to flood, by cutting it into eleven big pieces and moving it across a wide riverbed and up a very steep hill, using tractors and flatbeds in the early 1900’s. The stone chapel had been destroyed in the earthquake in 1931 and replaced with a pretty wooden one which has since been deconsecrated but is still used as a popular and expensive wedding venue where I guess they hold civil services. The gardens were lovely but the best thing was the amazing views over the valley and the dead-straight rows of vines.
Next we went to Moana Park where the enthusiastic and knowledgeable owner explained how they are the first winery to get accreditation for producing additive-free wines that are great for people who are prone to allergies. Also they appeal to vegetarians as they don’t use the normal egg white or fish blood in the
fining process. The white wines were so clear and pale that they looked like water, but tasted divine. I had not known that its actually the sulphates in wine that cause headaches and hangovers and these guys had dropped these to almost nothing, making it a very interesting proposition - imagine drinking all you want and not suffering in the morning. Until they take off, you wage-slaves you can use the “sorry Boss I cant come in today as I am suffering from a sulphate overdose” excuse next time you have tied one on and cant get out from under your duvet.
The last stop was at Ngatarawa where they are growing vines on the gravel left from the bed of an ancient river that dried up a thousand years ago when the water’s course was diverted to a new route after seismic activity. Here the grapes benefit from the heat retained in the stones that act like a great big electric blanket during the cold nights. Lastly we went to Vidal where we were served large platers containing gourmet meats, fish, shellfish, olives, mushrooms, breads, cheeses. It was very welcome and to be honest we were not really
bothered by the six more wines that come out by the glassful.
The area around both Napier and Hastings is attractive with the house owners expending a lot of effort on their gardens and with more variety of deciduous trees and shrubs in evidence. In addition to the mile upon mile of vines, most of which are fully or half covered with white netting to keep the birds away from the high sugar-content ripe grapes, there were many orchards with red apples and cherries on show. Its a very pretty area.
The next day I went on the food tour that started with visits to some local scenic spots, including the Tuki Tuki River valley, a house that had won several design awards, acclaim for its unusual architecture and was meant to be one of the most photographed houses in the country, a deer farm and several different views looking up to Te Mata Peak from the valley.
Te Mata (sounds like tomato) is a massive rocky ridge that has a strong Maori legend about a warrior prince who was set a load of tasks to perform before he could marry the daughter of a neighbouring chief.
He heroically completed them all except the last one where he was meant to eat his way through the mountain to form a pass, but bit off more than he could chew, choked on a large boulder and died. The Te Mata (meaning the face) ridge looks like a sleeping giant lying on his back, with the head, chest, and feet showing for the childrens version, but it includes a rather triangular shaped cock for the adult viewers. Later in the afternoon we drove to the top of Te Mata where the cliff sides are stuffed full of sea shells, as the whole of this area was under the ocean millions of years ago, which s pretty astounding when you see how high the ridge is.
We started the food and drink trail with a wine tasting session at Black Rock winery and then tried some absolutely delicious cheeses at the Te Mata Cheese company, where I bought a creamy brie made from goats milk, which I hope is wrapped enough not to leak its stinky smell from my coolbag when I’m back on the Magic bus for a full days trip when we go North to Mount Maunganui.
We stopped at Honey Farm for a honey tasting session where the ladies also tried lots of the creams, lotions and potions they sold, that made the bus smell like a fruit salad when we got back. They had a neat pipe system from a beehive outside that brought the live bees into a glass case, where you could watch them at work, view them in close up through magnifying glasses and even look at their hairy legs through a microscope.
Next we stopped at Prenzel where we tired various liqueurs, schnapps and gins, followed by a tasting of their wide range of flavoured olive oils and marinades. Back to the sweet stuff and a visit to the Strawberry Patch where we indulged ourselves in juicy ripe fruits dipped in chocolate sauce, followed by real-fruit icecreams. On the way to our last stop at The Mission winery (yes I know I went there yesterday) we passed by a golf club where a line of stumps had been left after condemned trees were felled These had been carved by members of a local craft centre into characters in 1930’s costumes with a golfing theme. They were very effective and quite
large.
After a brief visit to The Mission, we stopped a couple of times as we passed through Napier for me to take photos of a few of the art deco public buildings. The tour was lovely and had given us a good view of the local area as well as some of the delicious produce on offer. I had enjoyed my stop in this varied and attractive area, but it was time to move on and find some proper beaches, so off to Mount Maunganui on the North coast in the Bay of Plenty in the morning.
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hoa chung
non-member comment
nice
nice pit:-)