25 04 2010

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25 04 2010

For some reason we both woke early and had a cup of tea. After a lovely shower we were packed up and ready to roll by 0800 hours. What’s going on, this is the weekend.

In any case we had about 400 kms to get to Napier our destination.

We left Wellington with the grey cloud and wipers on and headed north. It was a long way but the weather improved as we got further north ending up in bright sunshine and having to change into shorts.

We stopped at Featherston and the old bill had shut the road for the ANZAC celebrations to ensue.

The route was highway 2 all the way. The scenery in the north started off quite dramatic as we left Wellington suburbs with a steep mountain climb and zig zag hairpins down the other side. It then levelled off to more agriculture, sheep cows and the like. The towns were much bigger than on the south island and although the traffic was light there was more of it.

The scenery was then gentler with fields of maize and roads with trees and banks of pampas grass edging it.

I took a picture of The National Bank which is Lloyds bank in all but name. The other thing they have here is Watties beans which we call Heinz at home.

We stopped off at a lay-by for breakfast about 1030 as we were by then quite hungry. After this Wendy decided to have a drive and I took over the role of photographer. She did say “The van has got a temperature gauge its showing 17.” I thought this strange as I had driven all last week and not noted the temperature, I looked and saw she was referring to A not 17 which was for automatic (drive).

We did see 1 camera van along the way and I noted it was unmarked. For Brian’s sake “Haven’t they got anything else to do, sneaking round in unmarked vans, on a Sunday too, its only to raise money, they’re all a bunch of shysters” Hope I didn’t miss anything out Brian.

For Nick’s sake, “They were there to save lives to get the speeding public to slow down.”

Our hope is Wendy was below the 100 kph limit, if not here is the evidence regarding the driver!

Anyway we got to Hastings which is Napiers twin town and is famous for its art deco buildings which is the style they built it in the 1930s after a whole load of it was destroyed in an earthquake. Very nice it looked too.

The campsite was lovely and joy of joys has a restaurant so a meal out for tonight is on the cards. The sunset was lovely so a few photos were in order.

The same USA couple who have stalked us for the last couple of nights also arrived and we greeted them like long lost relatives as we know nobody here in NZ. We teamed up and went out for a meal at the restaurant and we now know them as Maria and Dennis. They are over here for another 3 weeks. As a result I was later able to steal some even better shots of the great sunset from his face book account.

Time for bed.

Phil and Wendy

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Comments

[Peter]

Spooky
Mandy and I were downstairs flicking TV channels, and stopped for 5 minutes on an old repeat of Billy Connelly in New Zealand, he was in Napier, and we saw the whole street, 1930's style after an earthquake that destroyed large parts of the town. I then logged onto this travel log, and lo and behold, its exactly where you are. how spooky was that..... hope you continue having a great time, Peter xxx