Napier is on Hawke's Bay, which is the center of the North Island’s wine region. The town was pretty much leveled by an earthquake in 1931 (only two or three buildings were left standing). Napier was fairly advanced for the times, and had all underground utilities, which turned out to be a curse because the earthquake disrupted all the gas, water and electric lines and ignited fires that demolished whatever the earthquake had spared. Our bus driver said there was a good side to the disaster, however: the earthquake lifted the level of the land about seven feet around the bay, so that vast expanses of land that had been either under water or flooded at high tide were now high enough to build on and cultivate (after being desalinated). The city decided to rebuild in Art Deco style, and is noted for its many Art Deco buildings. They have a festival celebrating the Art Deco heritage every year (this year it will be the week after we leave ;-(). The city was completely rebuilt in a little over two years.

After tourism and timber, the main industry in the area is wine-making . We booked a tour to three wineries; unfortunately for David, he began to have a diverticulitis attack and started taking a medicine that fixes the inflammation, but with which he is warned not to touch alcohol in any form. He plans to have a proper tasting, where he swishes the wine around in his mouth, and then spits it out.

It turns out that one of the men on our bus is an extremely knowledgeable wine connoisseur, and he has studied up for this tour by reading several guides to the wineries of the region. Apparently he and his wife have been touring wineries and rating them for years. Half of the people on the bus still aren’t sure whether it is important to match the wine you drink to the food you are eating, and how to do it if so. At the first winery we visited, the knowledgeable man was incensed that he was subjected to a kindergarten-level lecture on wine and wine-making, when all he wanted to do was taste the wines, rate them, and move on. Most of the rest of the group were enjoying the tasting, but he was getting more and more impatient, especially since the winery was noted for its reds and we were only being given whites to taste . He spoke up, and the winery representative did respond by giving us a couple of reds to taste, one of which (a syrah) was extremely good.

Things got better at the next winery, which had a tour led by someone who assumed at least a certain level of interest and knowledge on the part of the group, and therefore showed us around the place without talking down to us. At the tasting, he took the knowledgeable man aside and gave him a proper tasting of a couple of wines not on the tour. This winery had quite good white wines, but I did not care for the reds. We bought a couple of the whites to take back to the ship.

The third winery had a guide much like the one at the first, but this was the, last one, and they had some beautiful gardens, so it was not necessary to listen to the jokes once the wines had been poured. David and I walked around the gardens for a while, and then the tour started back to town. We were running a little late, and a bit worried about getting back to the ship in time for dinner, but as we were leaving, another bus pulled up, so it was clear we were not going to be the latest group. (I found out the next day that they didn’t get back until more than an hour after the ship was supposed to leave, but that’s the benefit of booking a tour from the ship – they wait for you).

The bus driver took us back through Napier and let a few of us who wanted to photograph some of the Art Deco buildings walk along and do it, after which he picked us up and took us back to the ship. At the doc, there was a jazz band playing, and a lot of 1930’s era cars with their owners in perfect period costume. Even though we were late, I could not resist getting some photos, and a video of the jazz band.