What better way to usher in Chris’ 40th year than with a trip around the world! The last few days we’ve had the pleasure of relaxing in Napier. Napier is a cool little town on the east coast of the North Island right on the ocean. In the 1930’s Napier was hit by a massive earthquake that took down most of the city and as a result they rebuilt the city in Art Deco style popular at the time. Since then they've maintained these buildings giving visitors a blast from the past. Napier is also conveniently, located in one of New Zealand's best and most diverse wine regions, Hawkes Bay! Driving into Hawkes Bay from Lake Taupo is incredibly scenic and offers a smattering of wineries as you near Napier. Our first day in the city we finally found some sunshine and went straight to a harbour side patio to soak it with local cider and beer before heading to our oceanfront freedom site. This is one of the few freedom sites we’ve found that offered toilets, water and garbage so unlike other freedom sites it wasn’t restricted to self contained vehicles. Pretty quickly after our arrival it filled up with other nomads many of whom were calling the back seat of their car home. We realized shortly after parking for the night that our fridge had been awfully quite the last 24 hours. After checking it we realized it had not been working since the previous day. The really unfortunate part is just 24 hours earlier we had purchased $40.00 worth of ground beef, sausage and chicken plus a half litre. of coconut ice-cream. We ate what we could for lunch and dinner that day, including the entire ½ litre of ice-cream. By the next morning we ended up binning the rest of the meat since it was smelling pretty off and getting a powered site in Napier, with the hopes it would fix the fridge, was more costly than the meat. Despite some bad luck with the fridge and the return of the rain we managed to enjoy our 3 days in Napier doing a good walk about the city, we also hit up the National Aquarium during a rain storm and the rest of the time we just sat back and enjoyed the ocean views from the comfort of our Motorhome. The National Aquarium wasn't bad though a bit rough around the edges. The highlight was definitely the 2 kiwi birds housed in the nocturnal section of the aquarium and the group of rescued penguins. They also have a large aquarium tunnel to walk through but we found it sad because the sharks were so badly injured on their snouts from smashing into the walls. We've been to many other aquariums and you do see this occurring in captivity to some extent but these guys were particularly beat up looking. After a couple nights in Napier we decided to change the scenery so we headed towards Cape Kidnappers about ½ hour south of Napier and home to a large colony of Gannet sea birds. On route we took a detour to the Te Mata Peak. It’s an amazing stop with absolutely breathtaking views at the top. We drove most of the way up and hiked the remaining 2km, If you aren’t up for the hike you can drive to the very top and be rewarded with the same view. After some time we headed down and sought out a paid campsite for the night. The thought of a hot shower, laundry and the hope that power would get our fridge working was enough to convince us to drop $36.00. We weren’t disappointed, as soon as we plugged in our fridge came back to life! With all our meat tossed and no grocery stores nearby we ended up making a sad looking vegetarian pasta dinner for Chris’ 40th birthday however the ocean views and a gorgeous sunset easily made up for it! Tomorrow we will head to Wellington for a few days before ferrying to the South Island!
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