Blogs from Napier, Hawkes Bay, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 9

Leave Wellington and drive north a few hours to Napier, via Hastings. Both are famed for their architecture (Hastings more a Spanish style, Napier Art Deco) Both were practically rebuilt in the 1930s and 40s after the a massive earthquake in 1931 stuck Hawkes Bay url=http://stamps.nzpost.co.nz/Cultures/en-NZ/Stamps/NewZealandCurrentIssues/HawkesBayEathquakeAnniversary/HawkesBayEathquakeAnniversary.htm anniversary article . Staying at Wally's Backpackers - not bad, with free internet - result! Hastings is nice, mainly conisting of an Art Deco main street, with a really cool gym and cinema building. Napier is a lot bigger than we imaged, it's a town really, and has got lots of Art Deco buildings. Debs took a guided walk around the town to learn more about the lovingly restored and protected buildings and the town's histor... read more

Tongariro Crossing As I had mentioned in the last blog entry I was going to go on a hike ( or tramp as Kiwi's call them) through a place called the Tongariro Crossing which people will remember as 'Mount Doom' from Lord of the rings. On the 15 of Feb me and Mike a Canadian guy traveling with us both went on the tramp (the girls decided to go horse riding, wimps!). The views were stunning but the walk was very hard walk. The normal walk alone is 17km and as an option you can have a go at climbing the mountain which adds an extra 3 hours to the walk. We couldn't go all the way and not have a go so we ended up spending hours at some points literally crawling on our ... read more

As well as art deco architecture another thing that Napier is famous for is wine. Napier is in Hawkes Bay, a famous wine growing region. Not wanting to let all this wine pass us by we decided to have a day touring the wineries! Luckily for me Tim decided to drive (we decided against going on one of the tours as they seemed expensive when all you got was the transport. We thought this way we could save the money and buy lots of wine!) There are lots of wineries to choose from so for no good reason we decided to start at Mission Estate Winery which is the oldest winery in New Zealand. We got a free tour which told us the history of the winery. It was set up by a group of French ... read more