Flat Whites and Flat Tyres

An early start this morning to try and see the best of Napier before we leave at lunchtime. We started with a walk around our cottage’s neighbourhood on the top of the hill overlooking the centre of town. A lot of the houses are large wooden plantation style with verandahs along the fronts and sides. They look very light, spacious and attractive. The morning was sunny and warm, things are looking up!

The 1931 earthquake and the fires that started in the immediate aftermath destroyed almost every building in the town centre. The city was quickly rebuilt, almost all the new buildings were in the new style of the time – Art Deco. This makes the town centre unique in its consistency of styles of architecture, even subsequent changes to buildings and new buildings are in the same style and almost indistinguishable from the originals. Some buildings have been altered during their lives but have now been restored to the original design. In a few cases, the builders are still in business and the moulds for the plasterwork used in construction are still around and were used again for recent refurbishments.

I have to say that Art Deco isn’t entirely to my taste but some of the buildings have interesting stories behind them and the details are relevant to the original owners and usages.

Our cottage had a leaflet offering a self-guided walk around the significant buildings – about 40 of them within an easily walkable area.

We ticked off about half of them before stopping for breakfast – about 19 too late for me! Florence had scrambled eggs on sourdough, I had a vegetarian panini, both washed down with flat whites and a bona and berry smoothy for me – all very tasty.

The cultural centre of the town MGT – Museum, Gallery, Theatre – looked worth a visit but we’re too short on time. We crossed to the seafront, it has an Art Deco promenade and bandstand and a short contemporary pier which stretches out over the waves. The earthquake changed the shape of the beach, it now falls away very quickly from the shore so what would normally be good waves for surfing break 10 feet from the black sand. A few miles along the coast we could see Cape Kidnapper’s, home to largest mainland Gannet colony in the world – unfortunately this will have to wait for our next visit too.

One building was owned by a German chiropodist, the decoration had a German flag and one end, waves, then a New Zealand flag at the other. The Town Theatre is almost entirely the way it was when it was built, a new entrance has been added to the side to accommodate more visitors. Some of the designs are based on Mayan patterns that we’ve seen in Central America.

We picked up our bags form the cottage and headed to the bus station. There’s a print on the cottage porch about the original owner Mr Colenso, and a picture of one of his sons which makes it clear why he was shunned by the local religious community; he has very Maori features – his mother was Mrs Colenso’s maid.

Our afternoon was spent on a bus from Napier to Wellington, 387km and about 5.5 hours. The journey passes through the outskirts of Napier and round Hawke’s Bay to Hastings then on through the arable land we saw yesterday. The landscape is gently rolling, very green and pastoral. We’d been told before we came to expect something like Britain in the 1950s. There are certainly elements of this in the smaller towns but there are two big differences – there is a lot of space and not many people so everyone has plenty off room, no need for terraces of houses, lots of bungalows. There are also no buildings that are old by European standards, 150 years is considered a historical rarity.

We stopped in Palmerston North for a break for the driver. We should have been there for 20 minutes but as we were about to leave he spotted a flat tyre, this took an hour to fix. A few miles out of Palmerston North, we saw a sign advising a Historical Site 200m on the right – there was no more information, just an empty field. A few minutes later, on the edge of Shannon, we passed Owlcatraz – kiwis do like a pun.

We arrived in Wellington about 8pm, it was a short walk to our hotel, 5 minutes to leave things in the room and we hit the town. Cuba Street is supposed to be Hipster Central in Wellington but it’s quite subdued for a Friday night. The first place we tried was already closed. Ended up in Loretta, we could have been in Shoreditch – craft beer, sourdough pizzas, imaginative salads. We didn’t have the pizzas this time but the beer and salads were good.