Napier and Hastings

We stayed in the same hotel for two days so that we could see Napier and Hastings in the region of Hawke’s Bay. It is right on the water in a lovely bay area, but unfortunately today it was socked in with rain all day. Guess it's gonna be that way through the weekend, so we've lost our blue skies. Eh, it’s winter, whaddya expect. We made the very best of it starting the day at 6am with the 2 hour stage of the Tour de France on the telly. Oh, and Angela worked. Yippee, life is back to normal now.

NOT! We headed off to the shops looking for yarn, yarn and more yarn. Nada, and this in a wool producing area such as Hawke’s Bay. So, we window shopped, visited Starbucks, and avoided the rain as much as possible. Our very first shop stop was the Opossum World—totally cool! Apparently some crazy Aussies (this is where the dislike of Aussies by Kiwis must have started) many years ago brought over some cute and fuzzy little creatures called opossums (got them in the states, of course) when they weren’t natural to the habitat. Ever since then they have been breeding like mad and in the process eating the trees and destroying New Zealand forest, no joke it’s an environmental disaster that they are trying to keep in check. There are some 20 or 30 possum PER PERSON in the country. We’re not seeing it now, but when we vacationed here in Jan 05, it was a lot like at home with the prairie dogs, dead possum all over the road. Only they are a lot larger. It must be seasonal, we'll get you a photo when the road slaughter starts.

Of course, the good side is their fur, it is amazingly soft and some of our family members have some very soft scarves, socks and hats made from their fur that they got for Christmas. This is only one of the “uses” of the possum in this country (trap, kill, skin, make soft things out of fur). I think the other is sport and slaughter: hunting and trapping and killing just for that sake. This poster is hilarious, though. And true.

So this Opossum World was really funny because it had all the great possum gear that is wonderfully soft, but it had this “Bush Walk” set up that Don photographed a bit for you here. You’ll see the crazy possums on the car and the trapper in his hut waiting to skin his new kill. Looooveeely.

Okay, back to the motel by 11am, packed a lunch and headed off for the wineries, woo hoo! The important stuff.

While heading off to some dozen wineries (there are about 40 in the area I think), we spotted wildlife here, red deer I believe. Can you see the beauty in these wild, roaming animals? Wait, they have another name: VENISON. Yes, in New Zealand they farm deer like sheep to use for their meat, they are not native to New Zealand unless you like to eat their flesh (a vegetarian’s viewpoint). Sad!

Then of course we found sheep, boy they are hard to find in the countryside—NOT. We just waited to take pictures of sheep until they were cute pictures, and here are some babies, aren’t they adorable! No doubt dumb as a hump just like their parents, but cute nonetheless.

Well by this time we were on our 10th winery and we got really, really lost driving around. BUT, we were lucky enough to find our way with the help of this directional sign. Phew, back on our way home.