Sunday, 13 February

Today we're off to Hawkes Bay, the famous wine growing area and Napier, famous for it's Art Deco buildings. First of all though another of Coleen's famous breakfasts!

Our route to Hawkes Bay took us past more geysers and an interesting geo-thermal power station harnessing the earth's natural energy, then the magnificent Huka Falls and Lake Taipo. Huka Falls are quite amazing for their sheer power with enough water to fill 5 olympic size swimming pools passing over the falls every minute.

Huka falls

The road from Taipo to Napier was 140 km without a petrol station and barely any sign of habitation through forests and mountains. We noticed a constant stream of traffic coming in the opposite direction which we thought must have been evacuating Napier because they had heard we were coming but then we discovered the people were returning from a Sting concert the night before at a vineyard called Mission in Hawkes Bay.

The guide books are fond of telling visitors that there are about 4 million people and 40 million sheep in New Zealand, but after driving around quite a bit of the North Island we have so far seen zillions of cows and a handful of sheep, so we are beginning to wonder where they all are!

Our destination for the next two nights is on a vineyard called Millar Road and here we are staying in a self contained villa. Our expectations were exceeded as it is a wonderful and secluded location, looking over the vines and also Hawkes Bay and Napier in the distance. The accommodation is quite luxurious and stylish with screen printed soft furnishings and local artwork. We share a swimming pool so after a glass of the owner's first wine (The Supernatural 2009) with some Dutch guests, we took a dip as it's been a pretty hot day today. For anyone interested, the villa has two bedrooms and we know already that it's somewhere where we'd like to spend more time (a lot more time) so … any takers to join us on another visit?

Then we nipped out to a local supermarket for something for our supper as after eating out a lot in restaurants lately, all we really wanted was to have a simple cold meal and enjoy our new surroundings with a bottle of Supernatural wine.  Its a hard life!