Art Deco Napier

After the jet boat ride and a nice hot bowl of soup in town, we drove east across the mountains to Napier.  The road passes through more sheep and cattle country, and pine plantations.  At one point it gets very windy and narrow and it was a relief when a café hove into site for a stretching break.  The hills go pretty much right up to the ocean.  It is much drier on the east side of the mountains, a Mediterranean climate.  This region is home to the Hawke’s Bay vineyards.  There are lots of apple, plum and peach orchards too, often sheltered by 12' tall dense evergreen hedges.

Breakfast at the County Hotel with comb honey

Downtown Napier

Beach in Napier

Napier was rebuilt after a big earthquake in Art Deco style in the early 1930s, and you really could almost believe it was the 1930s.  We stayed at The County Hotel, a grand hotel downtown with beautiful wood work and brass fittings.  There was a lovely restaurant downstairs where we ended up eating both dinner and breakfast.  After dinner you could have a glass of port in the library.  Lots of people were using the Promenade along the ocean and gardens and fountains fill in space between the promenade and the smaller sidewalk along the street (as well as a skate park, a mini-golf course, and the ISite tourism building).  There was one great vintage clothing shop where I almost convinced Jake to get a striped jacket and straw boater's cap. 

Napier is also home to what may be the world’s only museum devoted to an invasive species.  Opossum World is half shop half museum.  The museum portion features large dioramas of the possum life cycle and eating habits and fur colors with stuffed and pickled possums of various sizes.  A couple posters describe the introduction of the possum from Australia for the fur trade.  They were introduced repeatedly by acclimatization societies.  Not too long after their introduction fruit farmers started noticing damage to their trees and so the fur trappers fought against the farmers on introduction versus eradication.  In the store you can buy many items made of a blend of merino wool, possum fur and silk as well as items made from possum pelts.  So a little of that tension between the pros and cons of possums may still be around!

Stuffed possums

From Napier we drove 4 hours south to Wellington.  That drive goes through flatter country until about the last hour when you go over a mountain range again.  On the way you go through a lot of little towns that seem to get progressively more prosperous the closer to Wellington you get. We stopped in a small town to split a sandwich (or sammie as they are called here) from the Lazy Graze café.  It had Holstein décor in the interior. Good sandwich and coffee!