Winding roads, Windy days, & Wineries

Hello everyone!

It's been a little while since my last post – sorry about that!

Two weekends ago (Sept 29-30) we took a quick jaunt up to Hawke's Bay (HB). HB is a 4-5 hour drive from Wellington and is located on the east coast of the North Island. It is one of the primary wine regions on the NI. We had a fabulous time - here are a few highlights from the weekend.

The mountain drive...
In order to get out of Wellington, we drove on a two lane road through the Rimatakas. I give Erik an A on his driving; as for myself, I think I earned about a C+ as the passenger. The road was one of the curviest I have been on, and every other turn it felt like we were about to slide right off... I was very stressed. I decided to close my eyes most of the way to keep from distracting Erik while he was driving by trying to use the imaginary brake pedal on my side. Since I closed my eyes, Erik asked if I was tired, to which I responded, "No, just stressed.” Then I scolded myself for acting like my Mom! (Sorry Mom, but you know what I am talking about!) I did open my eyes a few times, and the views were spectacular. Once we were through the mountains, we pulled over so I could unpack the Advil. From that point on it was smooth sailing!

Spending a couple nights in prison.
I don't know what it is with us going to all these converted places (remember the sewer system that was converted into an aquarium in Auckland?), but it seems to be a bit of a trend. The Napier Prison is the oldest in NZ. The building has served as a quarantine facility, an army barracks, an insane asylum, and served as lockup from 1862 – 1993. We stayed in the psych unit – which was really creepy. Figuratively because of who may have spent time in that room and literally because of the cockroach that crawled along the wall one night. I was thrilled about that.

Here is the entrance - (for the observant ones out there, this entrance was part of a prison addition, which explains the 1906 on here compared to the dates I just gave you).

The door to our cell -
The yard -
Bike D’Vine
We decided to change it up and rent bikes for our wine tour. It works exactly how it sounds – you rent the bikes and, depending on which route you want to take, you get dropped off near the first winery and work your way back. We chose Route 2 – which was 5 wineries, 1 chocolate factory, and 1 cider house/tap room (beer garden). You may be thinking that that sounds like a lot of drinking for bike riding, but I assure you pedaling your way through the countryside, straight into headwinds (I swear the wind was never at our back), and up a monster hill keeps you pretty grounded.

We had a perfect day for biking and the scenery was gorgeous. It was a nice mix of farms, small subdivisions, and of course, vineyards. Here are a few pictures from our day out – unfortunately it was quite early in the season so the vines were quite bare.

This is the bottle that I wanted, but in the end I decided it might be more than I bargained for - especially since I would have had to haul it around on the bike. Can you imagine?

A delicious cheese plate!
At the entrance Mission Estate Winery – the oldest vineyard in New Zealand. This ended up being my favorite...
Overlooking the Mission Estate Vineyards
On the way to Bike D’Vine (which is actually run out of someone’s garage) – I never thought I would see so many palm trees in NZ!
The Filter Room (this picture is actually from Sunday - we liked this place so much we decided to go back for another round)
Napier
Napier is one of the small towns in the HB region. It was destroyed by a massive earthquake in 1931 – at the time it was rebuilt, Art Deco was extremely popular. As such, most of the buildings are Art Deco. At times it felt like a bit of time capsule. I can’t say that I was a huge fan of the buildings, but there was a nice pavilion along the ocean… (I actually am not 100% that this is Art Deco, but it looked a bit different to me)

Picture looking south - towards Napier

More time in the Ford Focus!
Now that I was used to “driving” on the wrong side of the road (I put that in quotations since I actually did not drive at all), it was much easier to relax and take in more of the scenery. We consulted our maps and decided to check out Tukituki Road – a scenic drive marked on our map. This road, like many roads in this country, was relatively unmarked, narrow, and curvy. The road more or less followed the Tukituki River. It was a very rural that seemed to be very popular with some of the well-heeled kiwis. The houses along this drive were beautiful. Some looked like they were straight out of the Greek islands, while others looked like they were from Lake Como. Here are a few pictures from the drive:

A view of the Tukituki River
Like I said, quite rural – this cow just cracked me up! (I don’t understand how these cows can climb all these hills!) It's hard to tell from this picture, but the cow was right by the road/the car... It was really funny for some reason - it felt like I was having a staring contest with it.

Some pasture with a hillock backdrop
Te Mata Peak
Also marked on our map was the Te Mata Lookout. We figured we might as well check it out while we wer e in the area. As we entered the lookout park, there was a prominent sign about entering at your own risk – I wondered what this meant, and once we were into the climb, I figured the sign was talking about yet another narrow, curvy road…. Not quite. It was in reference to the actual lookout point. I later learned from one of my coworkers who grew up in the area (Havelock North), that for many years there was no fence at the top – just wide open.

This lookout was definitely worth the stop. Since we were using a variety of maps, we had no idea that the lookout we were driving up to see was actually the top of the hillock I had just taken a picture of 20 minutes earlier. If you look carefully (I think you can click on these), you can see Tukituki Rd/River. (By the way, Te Mata Peak is 400 meters tall.)
One of the craziest things about this place was the paragliding platform. Can you imagine what it would be like to paraglide off of this thing?? (We did not climb around the fence in this area since it was so steep – but other people were!) These pictures do not do the dropoff justice... the foreground is in the way here, but once that platform ends, it is straight down...
Same platform, different angle - there were two jumping points at the lookout. This was rather scary - it was crazy windy up there!

There she is - the Ford Focus...

The ride back…
Our ride home was relatively uneventful. Since it was dark for much of our drive to Hawke’s Bay, much of the scenery was new. Two of my favorite parts were the Akatarawa mountains and the windmill farm. The mountains were snow-covered and beautifully lit by a few bits of sun sneaking through the clouds. I wish I had a picture to share, but my camera battery had died. The windmill farm was surprisingly picturesque. It was rather hypnotic watching them from a distance (they were the huge white ones with three narrow arms – obviously not like Don Quixote). I will touch more on the eco-friendly push here in NZ another time….

Wrap up –
It was a really fun weekend… this past weekend we stayed here in Wellington and spent some time exploring some of the scenic trails through the surrounding hills. Next weekend (as in a few days), we are going to drive up to Taranaki , one of the volcanoes on the west coast. Take care everyone and keep in touch!