Thursday 29th July - Wellington - Napier - 310Ks
'Bloody Insomniacs!' were the words Derek woke up to . It was Sue cursing the people in the room above us who had seemingly been awake all night long. This involved various rotations of coversation, walking around and door-sliding. She only got about 2 hours sleep as a result - next place for us will be soundproofed or at least have no room above it! We hit the road in the pouring rain and drove steadily for about 3 hours. We were driving through some roadworks and next thing - bam! The wind had blown on of those oversized orange cones they call 'barriers' into the side of our car - it hadn't been tied down correctly at the time we were passing by. So once again we were in the wrong place at the wrong time - have to see what happens with the insurance though we did get the details of the roadworks crowd. So that put a bit of a downer on our day. We finally reached Napier mid-afternoon. Napier is a town that was essentially completely rebuilt in the 1930s after a huge earthquake flattened most of it -as a result it has one of the world's best examples of 'Art Deco' buildings. We settled for a KFC, some food supplies shopping and finding ourselvles a motel to stay (with breakfast included for once) .

Friday 30th July - Napier
As we've decided to rest here a couple of days, we had a lazy morning, with no particular rush to do anything. We drove down to the beach road and strolled back into the town. We ate lunch in the presence of 15 or so cheekly little sparrows who had no qualms about coming up close to us in the hope of getting fed. The day was fantastic with the first 'warm' sunshine we had seen since Sydney, so we sat outside a cafe a while having a drink. Our afternoon was spent on an Art Deco walk around the town centre. It provided us with some very informative background and history of Art Deco. The tour itself we really enjoyed and building's details we'd never have noticed ourselves were pointed out. They had 'Winter Festival' here last weekend where everyone comes here and dresses up in 20's/30's clothes and drives around in cars of the time - pity we missed it as it looked good on the video we saw afterwards

Saturday 31st July - Napier
We are getting used to these 'no hurry' mornings and long may it last . We took some photos of the buildings that had been shown that had been shown to us on the Art Deco Walk. Too cold for lunch in the sun today so the car it was - we don't feel like we're missing too much not having lunch 'out' as the couple of times we have in NZ so far have been a bit of a disappointment. Sue went shopping for some jeans whilst Derek caught up with affairs on the internet. As we got back to the car we noticed one tyre on the car was partially flat - the spare we had was one of those ridiculously small 'emergency only' tyres that the Japanese seem to love for it's space saving qualities! As it was 4.30 in the afternoon all the tyre places in town had shut and it was Sunday tomorrow we decided to stay an extra day in Napier - it was an easy choice as we like Napier and the place/motel we're staying in. We went to the theatre in the evening, partly just to get 'out and about'. It was a play called 'Meeting Karpovsky' and as Sue said 'it wasn't our cup of tea' - still, it was very well acted though perhaps a little slow for us .

Sunday 1st August - Napier
The puncture on the car had hardly gone down this morning bus as it's 200Ks to our next destination with 'not a lot in between' we decided not to risk it. Today was our day for a home-cooked Sunday roast - so we dug our the ingredients in the supermarket. The muesum in Napier gave us plenty of detailed accounts of the earthquake that obliterated the city centre in 1931. There was other stuff too on Art Deco, history and Maori culture. Being a Sunday afternoon we went for a drive up the coast to Hastings. One minute in the car park there, accompanied by the sound of loud rap music coming from a sports bar nearby, told us it was time to come straight back home again!

Monday 2nd August - Napier - Taupo
Finally after 4 days in Napier we left - but not without a quick visit to the garage to get our puncture sorted. 15 minutes later we were on our way, this time through winding roads surrounded by rough looking terrain. It did feel as if 'Middle Earth' (from the Lord of the Rings film) was not far off. We browsed the information centre and decided after the glacier walk on Franz Joseph, that the 8-hour hike was not for us - 'only for experienced alpine walkers in winter' the brochure said. Instead we decided to take a 30 minute flight over the 3 volcanoes in Tongariro National Park. We drove up to something called 'The Craters of the Moon' in the afternoon. This is a geo-thermal area full of craters with steam billowing out from beneath hot rocks and boiling mud and cracks and fissures regularly appearing in the ground. The steam coming out gives off a rotten egg whiff. It was a great place to spend an hour walking around.