Hawks Bay - Waitomo - Auckland

Next stop was the beautiful area of Hawk’s Bay (Napier & Hastings). The area is known for its vineyards and sunshine. We visited a beautiful winery for a quick look around, before we knew it we had tasted 8 different types of wine and had 2 bottles under our arms headed to the car. What happened?! Anyway, we also visited a honey processing facility and museum where we tasted 9 different types of honey originating from different types of flowers and pollens. We left the place a little “buzzed”….very sweet. Next stop was a chocolate factory where we casually mentioned in the gift shop to the lady we were on an extended Honeymoon – boom, free chocolate! First time we pulled the Honeymoon line and it worked.

From Napier we made the 1.5 hour journey north to visit family friends Owen & Linda. Unfortunately Owen was out of town working (Hi Owen!) but Linda kept us plenty occupied. We spent 3 terrific nights at their place which is in the mountain ranges between nowhere and nowhere. We painted the garage, fed the sheep (who didn’t need fed…trust me), walked along the river, tried the local ice-cream, more winery tastings and best of all - ate like kings! Linda trusted me enough to cook up a fresh lamb roast on the BBQ. It was about a 3 pounder….Linda and Renee shared the first 0.5 pounds then forced me to finish the remaining 2.5 pounds (very rude of them I know?). We were sad to say goodbye.

Our next stop was the glow-worm caves in Waitomo. It was a 1 hour tour, underground through a cave system about 100ft below the surface. The caves are home to “worms” which live on the roof of the caves. They dangle sticky strings from their bodies about 1 foot in length. They illuminate the strings like small little 0.001 watt light bulbs which attract insects which fly into the strings getting stuck…dinner. Incredibly impressive!

While returning to Auckland we made another quick stop at another family friend’s house Faye & Richard. They treated us to a terrific meal, drinks and some honeycomb Ice cream; a local Favourite! (Did you know NZ was the number 1 consumer of honey per capita in the world?). Anyway we had a great visit, and departed for Auckland in the morning.

We returned the car (For the trip we named it “Little Nissan” – original eh?). Ran some errands, and are now prepared for the 11 hour flight to Bali, Indonesia later tonight.

COLIN