Monday was my first day of traveling outside of Wellington, I took a but from the train station (yes, I know people normally take trains, but buses are so much cooler). It was a nice opportunity to see the topography, which is significantly flatter then the South Island, there were some hills but none on them matched the South Island's scale. One of the coolest parts of that ride was going up a hill into a cloud and being surrounded by windmills, it was almost surreal to see those giant rotors silently chopping up the clouds, if this is what the future looks like I am in favor of it! On my way to my destination I went through Hastings, which is the same name as the town where my brother Josh lives, small world, huh? I finally arrived at Napier that afternoon, it is a cute little seaside town, with a Art Deco theme as most buildings were destroyed in a earthquake in the early 1930's and rebuilt in the style of Art Deco.Upon arriving and checking my stuff in I did headed for the nearest hill to get my bearings of the city, so I walked a local bluff, the view was pretty neat, I could see Cape Kidnapper- which is NZ's equivalent of the White Cliffs of Dover.
It was also the Queen's birthday that day, so shops closed early--that was a little irritating. I managed to make it to a store called wool world- I would have liked to take the free tannery tour but I was too late- still it was pretty cool to just see all of the hides.
I got food for dinner- kiwifruit @ $1.50 a kg! (I am going to miss that). And then I walked the beach, that's one of the advantages of visiting a sea-side town.
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| Cape Kidnappers |
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| This is a part of the cool compass on top of the bluff, it had images of the edge of things surrounding the area and then labeled them. |
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| By far the coolest Geodetic marker I have seen to date. |
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| National Tobacco Company- prized Art Deco! |
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| Moornise |
