Category: North Island

We arrived in sunny Napier by coach from Wellington, and started to make our way towards our apartment on foot.

It’s always a bad sign when the map resembles one of those curly mazes on the back of a cereal box, with none of the roads leading in the direction we wanted to go. The shortest route took us through Tiffen Park, which sounded lovely until we realised this was more like scaling a cliff face than a walk in the park. Then our route took us downhill again. And then up again. And a couple more ups and downs as we got lost explored the Bluff Hill neighbourhood thoroughly. We were exhausted by the time we arrived at our apartment!

Napier is pretty unique in its consistent Art Deco style, having been almost entirely rebuilt following a devastating earthquake and resulting fire that hit the city in 1931. Instead of relocating, Napier’s residents chose to stay, and instead of recreating the past, they took the opportunity to embrace modernity. The city was rebuilt in just a few short years, and was briefly known as the world’s most modern city as a result. Walking around Napier felt like we’d time-travelled back to the 1930s, only with modern businesses inhabiting the tastefully restored buildings. After a slightly disappointing trip to Ranfurly (another town known for its Art Deco architecture) while cycling the Otago Central Rail Trail, we didn’t have particularly high hopes for Napier, but this time there were beautiful examples everywhere we turned. Our walking tour alone had over 70 stops on it, and this was just scratching the surface!

The vast majority of shopfronts were decorated in bright colours with graphical motifs, bold columns and often carried the name of the original business owner just below the roof. We diligently followed our self-guided walking tour around the city, and learned that many of the buildings had taken inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright, a highly successful American architect, which explained why the city seemed to have a slightly American twist.

That afternoon, we hired a tandem with a plan to cycle around the peninsula to the suburb of Ahuriri to round off our architecture tour at its star building – the National Tobacco Company Building. Billed as “the region’s Art Deco masterpiece”, we were slightly underwhelmed at its rather rundown appearance. To be honest, our reaction might have been partly due to the fallout from our recent traversal of Ahuriri’s one way system – I’d made a surprise emergency stop and unintentionally tipped Sara off the tandem and into a gutter while giving way, which irked her slightly for some reason. We later returned to Napier’s seafront via a second trip to the gutter on the opposite side of the one way system, before ducking into an Irish pub to repair our relationship.

That evening, we headed out to Vinci’s Pizza for dinner. The pizzeria is housed in a building with a beautiful wooden and glass frontage, very similar to the music shop next door (pictured below). Here we ordered a giant (18 inch) sourdough pizza, because we’d agreed that it’s better to over-order and have leftovers than under-order and be hungry. Still, you can probably see where this is going, and obviously we rose to the challenge and finished the whole thing. So full were we that we nearly didn’t make it back up Bluff Hill to our apartment.

The following morning, we woke to stunning sunshine and the sound of birds singing in the trees outside. One of the neighbourhood cats promptly arrived at our door, pleading to be let in so she could join us for breakfast. We totally would have let her in if we hadn’t had specific instructions NOT TO ALLOW THE CAT IN UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. Where’s the fun in that?!

With some time to kill before our onward bus to the geothermal hotspot of Rotorua, we spent the morning enjoying the sunshine in the elegantly named Clive Square. This was a charming place to spend time, especially with musical backing from the park’s Carillon (musical bells), which played four tunes twice an hour. Apparently the melodies change regularly, and feature a mix of nursery rhymes, seasonal tunes and popular songs.

At midday we boarded our bus towards Rotorua. As we exited Napier, we saw first hand the damage and destruction left by floods that hit the region in February 2023 after Cyclone Gabrielle. Whole vineyards had been destroyed, buildings had been gutted, railway banks had been washed away, leaving rails and sleepers suspended in mid-air, hundreds of trees had been relocated, and huge piles of silt had been deposited downstream. While the state of emergency has ended, it was clear that the repair effort was still very much underway. It was shocking to see the level of damage, but if the 1931 earthquake response is anything to go by, the region will come back even stronger than before and we’re wishing them well.

We left Tongariro National Park for the 322 km journey to Wellington on a spectacularly scenic train.

We sped past the National Park’s volcanos before the land opened up into beautiful farmland, punctuated by remote frontier communities. As the rolling hills became more pronounced, we passed over a series of gorges with the help of a handful of viaducts. The weather was flawlessly sunny the whole way, although we did pass a rain storm in the distance, which contributed a spectacular rainbow to our view.

On top of the incredible scenery we saw on this journey, the train itself has got to be one of the most comfortable we’ve ever ridden. The carriages were large and incredibly light, owing to the huge (and clean!) windows stretching all the way up to the carriage roof. There was also a full bar, and we hit the jackpot with a comfortable four-seater and table on the best side of the train.

Having said all this, I still have slightly mixed feelings about this train route. It seems that the regular passenger services have gradually reduced over the years while the price of rail travel has increased, resulting in a mode of transport that is significantly more expensive and less convenient than a hire car, coach, or plane (even for shorter journeys). I’m sure this contributes somewhat to New Zealand’s car ownership rate, which ranks amongst the highest in the world. This seems like a surprising exception to New Zealand’s otherwise keen prioritisation of environmental issues, although I do appreciate the difficulties of using public transport to get around such a sparsely populated country.

The following day, we left our Airbnb in the sunshine of a quiet Sunday morning in Wellington. At least, it was quiet until we happened across the Riverfront Market, and it became immediately clear that this was the place to be. Even at 9.30am, there were long queues at the fresh produce market, and food trucks were setting up to serve full hot meals. In fact, the food looked so good that we returned later for lunch and purchased a Hungarian Lángos – a deep fried disc of dough topped with sour cream and cheese, which gave us a nice nostalgia hit back to our 2010 visit to Budapest. We also picked up a butter chicken roti wrap, but sadly Sara didn’t manage to take a photo before I devoured it.

Wellington’s picture-postcard sight is its vibrant red cable car, which shuttles passengers up and down the mountain between the city centre and the botanical garden, with a few residential stations along the way. Needless to say, we gave the cable car a go, and thoroughly enjoyed the ride despite its relatively modern replacement for the previous 1979 cars. At the top station, we explored the cable car museum, where we followed the precedent set at the National Park visitor centre and took a power nap in front an informative video on the history of the cable car. We also learned about the private cable cars that neighbourhoods had built to avoid the steep climb up to their hillside houses, including one household who had ostensibly built a cable car specifically for their elderly dog!

The botanical gardens weren’t bad either, and we had a lovely afternoon stroll amongst the fern and succulent gardens. Hidden within the formal garden though was a lovely grey cat. We only noticed him because a couple in front of us were giving him some fuss, but he still seemed happy to receive some attention from us too. That was, until it became too much for him and he suddenly took a swipe at me. Fortunately, I dodged his paw just in time, but then as we walked away I heard a father tell his son that there’s normally a cat around here somewhere. I hope we hadn’t used up the last of the cat’s patience! 😬

Wellington has something of a reputation for craft beer, and there seems to be a disproportionate number of pubs, restaurants and tap rooms around town selling great beer. We had one cheeky round in Panhead – a steam-punk/industrial themed bar (below left), and another in Little Beer Quarter – a delightfully familiar-feeling pub (below right). The latter definitely stole our hearts, as I don’t think we’d realised how much we’ve missed proper pubs since leaving London!

Wellington is also home to Te Papa – New Zealand’s national museum. Here we learned about the Māori’s journey to New Zealand from Polynesia roughly 800 years ago, followed by European settlement approximately 500 years later. The museum also covered NZ’s indigenous wildlife, and we were shocked to learn that NZ is almost completely devoid of indigenous mammals, short of a few bats. The mammals that have since spread across NZ (rats, possums, etc.) are gradually wiping out some of the unsuspecting and rather helpless flightless bird population, who are bizarrely trusting given their complete lack of natural predators.

We’ve since learned more about the national debate around how to manage the damage caused by feral cats in NZ. The annual North Canterbury Hunting Competition was recently extended to feral cats, which understandably caused a bit of an uproar. Clearly, none of the participants would be able to tell the difference between domestic and feral cats, and thankfully the local authority quickly rolled back on this plan. Still, we couldn’t help but wonder whether this botched competition was partly responsible for our low cat count so far, despite NZ boasting one of the highest rates of domestic cat ownership in the world.

All in all, Wellington was a delightfully comfortable place to spend a few days as a tourist. The cable car and mountains provided a picturesque backdrop to the beautiful quay, the museum and botanical gardens were both excellent and free, and the food, coffee and beer was consistently delicious.

The Lonely Planet had set our expectations suitably low by saying that we could expect good weather “at least several days a year”, so we really felt we’d lucked out with two warm and cloudless days. It’s not hard to see why the locals proudly remark that, “You can’t beat Wellington on a good day”. It really was a great city in the sunshine.

Our brief stop in Wellington concluded our stay on New Zealand’s North Island. Our next hop will be to the lovely seaside town of Picton, on our way to cycle the promisingly-named Great Taste Trail.