Today is the day that we say goodbye to Marie & Alan, it’s been lovely seeing them and we have had a great time touring around North Island.
Their flight wasn’t due to leave until the small hours so we all went out for a slap up buffet style meal at “The Happy Days” restaurant, courtesy of Marie & Alan. A real treat as Pete & I always cater on Nadezhda.
We finally left them at 11pm and headed back to our camp site for the night.
We weren’t that keen on where we were staying as the receptionist had told us earlier that recently a car had reversed over a tent, luckily no one was hurt but the tent was a write-off! Pete parked the car in such a way that it wouldn’t happen to us.
27th March 2008
Got up early for our long drive to Napier. We stopped at a bar for an urgent loo break. What a very strange place! Pete and I ordered a drink and watched a car pull into the car park - as the driver reversed into a spot he hit the wall. The driver got out and looked very unsteady on his legs. At it turned out he was a musician and a talented one at that, he pulled out his guitar and started singing. We think that the unsteadiness was due to being unwell and not being three sheets to the wind.
At 5pm we arrived in Napier and, as its was getting late, we had a quick drive around and headed back to the campsite for the night.
In the middle of the night I had a sensation that something was crawling up my sleeping bag but being half asleep I decided to ignore it. A few hours later I woke up thirsty and wondered why my handbag was on the bed so I reached down to move it to then discover that it was a small tabby cat that had decided it was too cold to sleep outside and it was going to bed down with me for the night.
Phantom lookalike!
I called Pete, which then in turn woke the cat up. After a few strokes it quite happily went back to sleep.
28th March 2008
Napier is a very pretty little town and gives the impression of it being prosperous & wealthy area.
Beautifully restored Art Deco buildings and palm tree avenues, it is totally different from most of the other New Zealand towns that we have seen - the rest of New Zealand’s towns wouldn't look out of place in an American wild west movie.
We booked to go on a wine tour and the coach was due to pick us up at 12pm from the campsite.
The mini bus turned up 10 minutes late and everyone on the tour were “Pommies” - a couple from the north of England and a very well spoken mother & daughter from Clapham, London.
We visited 4 vineyards and sampled 6 nips of red & white wine at each. In our opinion the smallest & organic vineyard produced the nicest wine. Also we believe that New Zealand makes nicer white wine than red wine.
2nd winery and the best wine of the tour
We had a superb group but the wine helped to loosen people’s tongues!
Fantastic day, brilliant crowd & we certainly wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
A group of youngsters camping next to us took a different tour and said that their tour had been very staid, it really shows that people can make or break a day out.
The little cat turned up again but this time decided that it wanted to get into the sleeping bag, that was a bridge to far for me so Pete ushered the cat inside his. It snuggled down for the night. We couldn’t believe how bold it was.
29th March 2008
Off to Wellington to catch our ferry to Picton at 8am tomorrow morning.
En-route we stopped to pick up a hitchhiker. Graham must have thought all his Christmas’s had come at once as he was heading for Wellington & so were we.
Hitchhikers are normally a friendly and sociable types but Graham wasn’t - so after making small talk for a short while Pete & I gave up and just carried on doing our own thing.
To make life easier for us, we booked a cabin for the night as we really didn’t fancy having to pack a tent in the dark early the next morning, this turned out to be a good call as when we arrived in Wellington the heavens opened and chucked down with rain.
The cabin was more like a very basic prison and right next to the kitchen, not a good position as it was really noisy all night with people coming & going.
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