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Published: October 4th 2009
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Black Beaches
Black sand at Napier Tue 29th September 2009
Give me that blog back crazy woman… only joking - good job Mrs B. We’re up early and down for reasonable breakfast - Claire feeling better although not perfect so still manoeuvring for a little moan mid morning I think! We looked outside and then were totally confused with what we’d seen - in fact - we could not believe it. Yes, it was SUNNY and there was NO RAIN! For now! We drove around Napier for about 20 minutes - the buildings are well cool, and this place went from zero to hero with daylight and a little sun. One theme of NZ today in the buildings has been a lack of uniformity and development control in areas - sort of every building totally different - here however, EVERYTHING is art deco. We drove around and seen some stunning art deco buildings. We left Napier and headed up the coast retracing the last of our steps last night towards Gisborne. However, it appeared the next town up the east coast was nearly 100k… as we were ultimately heading south, we u-turned after about 10k north. At this point, we found the dazzling coast line where
Napier - Art Deco
Random Art Deco building, Napier we had a stunning view back over Napier that we had left. The beach here is a strange dark shingle, no obvious sand.
We’re heading south now, bypassing Napier where we spent last night. There a multitude of vineyards - as you’d expect. The area is beautiful in day light. We jumped in to Hastings - approx 30k south of Napier. Here we got lunch from the bakers, not a great town, nothing like Napier, only a few art deco buildings. We left this main area about 11 heading for Wellington - estimated drive time on map of nearly 5 hours for 290k? Is it a farm track?
The roads were not farm tracks, but fairly slow ‘A’ roads to start, mostly limited to 100k - everyone in NZ obeys all the speed limits! Unfortunately, about 75k south of Napier, the beauty of the Hawkes Bay area disappeared and the journey becomes a lot more mundane. Still I’m on ma holiday…
The journey heads from Hastings through some bizarrely names places that serve no huge purpose in life; Otane, Takpau, Norsewood, Dannevirke, Woodville. Then we have a choice, continue down the 2, with the Tararua Range on
Napier - Art DecoII
Random Art Deco building, Napier right, and Pacific on left - or, take the 3 then 57 with ranges on left now and Tasman sea on right… One of life’s big dilemmas I hear you chant. We opt for 3-57 taking us towards Palmerston North - two reasons; i) potential of a reasonable sized town for a coffee stop, and potentially time permitting ii) we head back up west coast towards Wanganui to get a view of the famous MT TARANAKI - ‘The near perfect cone shaped volcano!’
However, as we’re heading towards Palmerston on this journey that whilst beautiful, has nothing amazing as by now, we’ve seen a lot of countryside. Approaching Palmerston, we take a decision - no trip towards volcano as we’re time limited (noting we hope to arrive Wellington before rush hour) and rain is moving in from West therefore you’d have to drive quite close to volcano - that could be anything upto 200k north again. That sucks.
We even avoid Palmerston traffic and cut it and the corner off by taking the 57 through more rubbish towns including; Tokomaru, Shannon, Levin… etc. In fact the only great thing about that latter is when your leaving… We join
Hire Car
Our beast the main road south from the north we left what fells like weeks ago - Route 1, which we last spotted 20k north of Hamilton only 1 ½ hours outside Auckland. I’m thinking - yes, the main road. However the “main road” is single track, very busy and appears to literally go through about 20 towns from here in the 100k to Wellington. That’s why the drive time was so high. By this time, we’re getting tired and fighting regularly about nothing… love and marriage. We’re at breaking point so we stop to stretch the legs and get some afternoon tea. What better place to stop than Otaki. Yes, that’s right, Otaki. It was 20 shops on the main road and easy parking, a bakery which at 40km/h warranted a arcing left in to the gravel car park. 2 coffees later - we come to the same answer - the coffee in NZ is nowhere near as good as Australia. Claire nearly buys a $100NZ swim costume starting another ‘informed debate’ between us. I win, Claire decides that spending this money for a few swims may be a little excessive. We jump back in car, and head for Wellington -
Hawkes Bay
View from distance back at Napier, Hawkes Bay Eta 1630 ish. The other reason for stop was to grab a map - whilst we’d booked Intercontinental, we’d no map printed…. Hey ho. I tell Claire when doing supermarket work at uni, I found 5 different sites a week for 12 weeks for 3 years running - its called a sense of direction and using male intuition… I asked the bloke in the bakery - 1 sheet - Aotea Quay, hit the docks and you’ve gone too far - easy. Sure enough, 20 minutes later, the road is opening to dual carriage way, eventually motor way - we must be close. Passing Porihua, the road is step up and down, and before we know it, we’re cruising down the hill into Wellington. We find hotel in 5 minutes, really easy - car parked, checked it without any pain.
Claire is still tired, however we head out for dinner - a quick google finds a place called “Matterhorn”. I’m thinking ski Sunday 1990’s and downhill alpine skiing… however it was far from that. We walk as the rain is off, only about 5 blocks (which in Wellington are small!). Our first impressions of Wellington are really good. Nice little city, cool shops, seems on first glance a touch funky - we’ll see more tomorrow. We find Cuba St where restaurant is and start walking up. It looks like Blackpool - we say to each other, if we’d be randomly walking - we’d have headed of this straight away! However, we find a small sign half way up for place, and notice on door saying it’s at end of alley… would never have even known this was a restaurant never mind went in. Looked good on closer approach. No need to dwell any longer - the place was fantastic, the service excellent - hence the food award it had! We again never took starters - Claire the obligatory fizz, myself a G&T (which had a cucumber instead of lime????? Was nice tho). Claire had monkfish with fennel, myself lamb shoulder with possibly the best bit of all, a morrocan lamb shoulder casserole in a pie - like a pork pie to look at, but totally amazing with some from of relish squash which tasted like mango chutney. Awesome. Another great meal - this makes our holidays more than anything we mutter to each other.
A cable car debate/discussion proved that on the way home, we were indeed still married. Watch out tomorrow and we’ll see who was right…! Looking forward to seeing Wellington and heading back out at 3pm to Melbourne!
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