Day 15: Riding Wendell from Napier to Taupo

It’s morning again and these days are going by so fast. It seemed like it was just the other day that we were in Mission Beach and were finally over our jet lag. Now we have just two more nights before we return to reality. Alas.

The breakfast part of the B & B was very good. The owner, Ruth, fixed up some nice kiwi (fruit this time), croissants, muesli, and other vegetarian fare for Kirsten and I along with the other two guests, a nice older gay couple from Palm Springs. Bizarrely, once we all found out we were Americans we couldn’t help but talk about the politics of our country. I’m sure our host was either bored out of her mind or perturbed at our sensibilities. Oh well, it was a delicious breakfast and a wonderful diversion to the endless hotel rooms. This was also the first time either of us had stayed in a bed and breakfast and we both liked it. It seemed like we were staying with friends rather than at a hotel and I suppose that’s the appeal.

The morning was spent nosing about downtown Napier in the daylight. We wanted to go to this town because after an earthquake leveled the place back in the 1930s they rebuilt everything in the art deco style. The guidebooks all tout it as the next best thing to Miami Beach if not better. The art deco is very nice but it’s much more subtle than the flashy buildings and neon of Miami Beach. At first I thought it was far inferior but as I began to notice all the little details, I changed my mind. It’s definitely an excellent collection of art deco architecture but to compare it to Miami Beach isn’t really fair to either city. It was more like the art deco you would find in the American west than the stuff you find on the coasts.

After a bit of lunch in a sidewalk café we took off in the newly renamed Wendell the Rental car toward the resort town of Taupo. This involved more mountain driving, this time over the Ahimanawa Range, which was not as beautiful or twisty and extreme as yesterday’s drive. We did stop alongside the road to see some waterfalls though that were quite spectacular if not a little far off. Once we got over the range it began to rain and never really let up all day so we couldn’t really enjoy the views across Lake Taupo today but hopefully tomorrow will be clear.

We spent our rainy day perusing the Taupo museum which had some very impressive Maori carvings and models of World War II planes. I pointed out the planes that my Grandfathers were involved with to Kirsten who smiled and nodded. They also had a very long wooden canoe that was half finished before it was abandoned for several centuries and even survived forest fires and volcanic eruptions. Needless to say it was pretty beat up but with a little patchwork it could probably be taken out for a jaunt on the lake.

After a wrong turn at one of the roundabouts we ended up going down a road to Huka falls which we decided to see rather than turning around. The falls were impressive in that they were like a horizontal Niagara Falls. It was a very large volume of water being forced into a very long and narrow chute. It didn’t descend far but the chute was probably an eighth of a mile long. It was an impressive display of turbulent hydraulics.

Our final stops for the evening were at a honey store where Kirsten bought two big jugs of honey that we’re hoping the customs officials will let us take home and we tried New Zealands favorite ice cream flavor – Hokey Pokey. It’s a sort of buttery vanilla flavored ice cream with chunks of crunchy caramel in it. It’s similar to pecan pralines but minus the pecans. It’s delicious!

The other stop was the grocery store as the restaurants in town didn’t seem to be too appealing. So we picked up a rotisserie chicken, a bottle of local wine, some bread and cheese, and some breaded yams that we sautéed in our kitchenette. It was a good dinner and now the Jacuzzi awaits.

Note that new photos and movies are up on our Flickr page (more to be added here to the blog later).