A Night in Napier

Callie and I recently took our second driving adventure out to the city of Napier. Out on the east coast of the north island situated on the southern edge of Hawkes Bay is the Art Deco capital of the world. The journey began with the rental of the little car that could. We picked up our Toyota Vitz downtown and headed off following the trusty directions of our GPS. We ran along the coast until we started heading across the island. We took the road through Palmerston North which is a bit of a college town, as is has the main campus of Massey University nearby. We drove around the main square downtown and parked at the mall to do some wandering. The rainy weather kept us from going too far beyond the mall but had a tasty kebab at the food court and some nice window shopping. Our mission to locate Apples to Apples failed again but we held our heads high. Continuing down the road out of town gave us a great view of the wind farms in the Tararua area between Ashhurst and Woodville. According to this site there are 158 turbines that measure 70 meters tall. This site is immediately followed by a winding path through a valley carved by the river we were driving along.
Thanks to the internet for this picture as we did not stop along the way. Once out of the valley we enjoyed the leisurely drive through the country side with many views of sheep and their lambs grazing, napping and more grazing.

We arrived in Napier and checked into our hostel and went for a walk along the beach. We visited the iSite which had a nice little gift shop attached to it where Callie got a couple of post cards. We continued down the beach until we came across a genuine traveling gypsy camp that had opened up to sell their various wares and services, such as train rides and 10 minutes piloting an off road segway. One of their very creative vehicles had a bumper sticker declaring that "speed was not on option when your house is on your back." After walking a bit further down the beach we turned into the city to walk back home. After seeing the usual chain stores we walked a bit of the main pedestrian shopping area on Emerson Street. We didn't visit many stores because we felt like returning to the hostel so Callie could take a nap and I could do some reading( I was SO CLOSE to finishing my book!). We ventured back out a bit later to find out that the sidewalk on Emerson Street had been rolled up around dinner time. With this defeat we returned to the car and Callie took the wheel for a quick spin that ended up taking us down to Hastings which was about 20km away. After driving around the area failing to find dinner yet again we returned to Napier to have a tasty dinner at a local beach party themed restaurant then called it a night.

The next morning we checked out of the hostel and visited Emerson Street again, this time successfully finding a sandwich and a quiche that made a tasty breakfast. We then went over to a rental shop near the Napier port and acquired two mountain bikes for two hours. The entrance to the rental shop was a sliding door that I opened up and one second later had a border collie trying to get out. After stopping the attempted breakout, we did all the paperwork and we were given our identically sized bikes. This made the adventure a bit more challenging for the more fun sized members of our party but the usual persistence and determination overcame any difficulty. Napier has a boardwalk that starts somewhere in the port and continues down the beach of Hawkes Bay farther then we ventured. Along the way we rode by a flea market that we would visit on our return trip. The rest of the ride back went smoothly and because the border collie was having some supervised time on the beach, there was not another attempted jail break. We got back on the road after getting gas and drove back the way we came. There was a bit of a flash back along the road out of the region as there were a few bridges that were one lane bridges. The first place I remember coming across these was in Costa Rica on our honeymoon but we were not doing the driving so there wasn't much worry. Fortunately because there was not much traffic, they were easy enough to navigate across. Along the way we stopped to say hi to a few special road-side ambassadors.


We stopped in Dannevirke for a taste of home. Subway is alive and well here in New Zealand and is about as common as McDonalds. Most shops seemed closed in Dannevirke because it was Sunday. There was one local bakery called the Mans Bakery and Cafe that we looked into but it looked like another meat pie store which we still have not adjusted to so we settled on the good old 6 inch sub. From there we kept on the road till arriving home. I am not sure which engine our Vitz had but we found out that the 68-104 HP engine had difficulty with hills and the 100km speed limit; particularly both. Despite the slow hills the Toyota performed admirably and returned us home safe and sound from another fun adventure.