De-Tour de Kiwi

We arrived in Taupo and drove to the Taupo Motor Camp. We parked right beside the river and hadn’t even got out of the vehicle when the ducks came for some food. We fed them some ginger nut biscuits but I had to keep telling one of the ducks off as it was charging and head butting the other ducks so it could get some more food. We also fed the sparrows and two beautiful grey/black swans with red beaks. After dinner and laundry we watched the first episode of “Entourage” an American TV series (we saw a few episodes of Series 2 whilst in Texas). The show is about a new rising star in Hollywood, his friends, agents and their quest to milk the fame game for all they can get. Worth the watching just for Kevin Dillon’s character “Johnny Drama”, the funniest character on TV since David Brent.


The next morning we got up to some glorious sunshine and Chris took some photos of the mist swirling about the river. We had decided to do a walk/climb up Mount Tauhara. The walk up was fine apart from having to do some tree hugging to get round the path and fight our way through some of the shrubbery, it was like a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark at times. The views from the top were amazing and it was well worth the hour or so climb up!


We wandered around Taupo city centre before driving south towards Wellington. We stopped off for dinner at a Chinese takeaway in Turangi no cooking for me that night YIPEE and the food was great too!! We drove upwards through snowy mountains on a road with signs to advise if it was opened or closed and saw some of the most amazing scenery highlighted by the luminous full moon lighting the way. It was dark when we stopped for the night at a picnic area in between Taihape and Mangaweka.

Saturday morning the mist was swirling around like pea soup and after taking some photographs we headed down towards Wellington. We arrived there about 11am and after finding a parking space we booked a room in the Wellington Hotel. The parking at the hotel was non-existent so we spent about 20 mins trying to find a space big enough for the van and safe enough to leave the vehicle overnight. We booked into the hotel and then headed out for a wander around Wellington. We had lunch in the Black Harp and a delicious pint of red cider….I think it was laced with Blackcurrant (So I had a wee smile for my sister Jennifer and my friend Audrey who can drink anyone under the table with cider).

Chris headed out later on to meet a kiwi called Mick who told him where he could watch the Celtic v Rangers game…..might I add we have done a 5 our detour for this and hence the reason Mr Reilly decided to get me a nice hotel room for the night!!
I stayed in with my bottle of wine and watched some DVD’s whilst waiting for my man to turn up. At 2.30am he appeared none too worse for wear despite the fact that Rangers won after some dodgy refereeing decisions and unsportsmanlike behaviour from the home side according to Mr Reilly. About 5am I was woken up by Chris trying to put his jeans on, enquiring as to what he was doing…“I am going to the bathroom!“, he thought he was still in the campervan!! Chris was also mentioned in an article on the E-Tims website written about the Black Harp pub where the Scottish ex-pats watch game’s in Wellington. Black Harp Diaries.

I had decided the night before that we would go for a good breakfast so we went to the Krazy Lounge and sat and chilled whilst reading the NZ Sunday Papers. As we were deciding what to have we spotted Robert (my ex) leaving the place with coffee’s before I had the chance to say hello. I knew from his sister, my friend Eileen, that he was somewhere in New Zealand but didn’t know exactly where. The breakfast was fab, bacon, two poached eggs, mushroom, 3 wee sausages, bread and a hash brown all washed down with lashings of tea. I didn’t leave a morsel on my plate.

We then waddled along to the Te Papa museum down at the quay which is free and definitely worth a visit. You could easily spend a whole day in here if you wanted to, we wandered through the geological part which had lots of interactive displays. One of my favourites was where you had to jump onto a piece of metal which showed how hard you had jumped on the Richter scale. We also went into a house which shook as though you were in a small earthquake. There was also an exhibition that Chris really liked of a New Zealand artist called Bernard Roundhill, who designed art work for soup cans, magazines, jigsaws and many other day to day items. Near the museum we spotted a UK shop selling all manner of sweets and condiments from back home, we left with a few cans of Irn Bru which were quickly devoured.


To make up for our de-tour, for Chris to watch the footie, we headed back north east on the road to Napier late in the afternoon. It was going to take over five hours and the first part of the road was a nightmare as we drove over a high pass with tight bends and narrow lanes, so we stopped on the road overnight after about 3 hours.

Campervan Rule No 5: Never park next to an airfield

We were woken up about 6.30 in the morning with a huge thrumming sound and the van was shaking. Looked out the window to see a small airplane take off. 10 mins later and the same thing happened again so we decided to make a quick getaway onwards to our destination. There seemed to be an awful lot of crop spraying going on.

Drove for another couple of hours after stopping off for a quick breakfast before we hit Napier. This town had a huge earthquake in 1931 and most of the buildings were destroyed. In addition to this the land level rose by over 2 metres and increased the size of Napier. The insurance companies called this ‘An Act of God’ anything to get out of paying any claims. The government re-financed the rebuilding of the town and many young architects were brought in from Auckland and Wellington who were influenced by the current ‘Art Deco’ styles in vogue at the time. Napier rivals Miami for the Art Deco capital of the world.


We picked up a map at the tourist info to give us an idea of where to go and started on our Art Deco tour. Some of the buildings were amazing and the sky at most points was a beautiful blue so we snapped away to our hearts content. We stopped off at the Deco Centre which sells a lot of trinkets and also provides a free video giving an insight into the earthquake along with the rebuilding. It gave us lots of additional information. A couple of our favourite buildings were the ASB Bank and the Daily Telegraph Building.


We wandered around with cricks in our necks from looking upwards for several hours and would have happily spent much more time there but we’d decided to head back to Wellington to catch the things we’d missed over the weekend. So after a quick lunch we drove all the way back from the way we’d come. We managed to hit the dodgy pass just before the sun set - we didn’t fancy drive back up this in the dark. That night we stopped off at the Capital Gateway in Newlands on the outskirts of Wellington which also recently provided campervan sites. Since we’d had a long drive we ate in the bar that night and had a great meal before retiring to watch another couple of episodes of ‘Entourage’.

The following morning we walked for about 10 mins into Johnsonville where we got a train into Wellington. When we arrived in Weliington) we realised that we were next to the Beehive building (Chris didn’t think that it looked anything like a beehive) which is a parliament building. As we walked along the sun had started to shine so we took the Cable Car up to the top of the Botanic Gardens for a view over Wellington which was up a really steep hill and whilst we found the view good but there wasn’t much else at the top!

After another wander about the shops and going to the friendly bakery which lived up to it’s name for lunch we went on to the internet for a while before we decided to have a ‘handle’ of beer (425ml in a glass with a handle) whilst sitting in the sunshine in an Irish bar on Cuba street. It would have been tempting to stay there all day but we decided to head back and have a pizza for dinner. Two nights in a row not cooking for me YIPEE!!

The following morning we had a feast of cheese with some delicious cheese and beef sausages on cheese rolls for breakfast (Chris is really missing his cheesy pasta with cheese pasties). We then headed to the ferry as it was time to say goodbye to the North Island and head south. The ferry was over an hour late but we sat in line and I caught up with my own diary. I wasn’t looking forward to this trip in view of my sea sickness but the ferry wasn’t that busy and we got a seat next to a window with a power point so that we could plug in and do some things on the laptop ie Chris played games…this laptop has it’s advantages!!

P.S. Chris has also had an article published on a celtic fansite, to have a read click here