It was quite quick exit from the campsite – we went a bit quicker and didn’t see the hop and as we jumped over it our reserve wheel just fall down. Looks like we didn’t properly put it back when we got our first flat tyre. We put it back in a few seconds and then went directly to Napier
.
Napier is a city, which was built (again) after strong earthquake in 1931 and they built it in the art deco style. We had a few places we wanted to see, first of them was the possum world. It is more like a shop with some information about possums and also the place, where we found that there is no difference between possum and opossum – just the spelling. Sounds strange to me. They had a lot of stuff from possums such as sweaters, gloves, caps, and others. We were shocked when found that they have about 70 millions of them (around 20 of them for each New Zealander) and they eat about 21 tonnes of vegetations every night.
Quick stroll around the city, which is really beautiful but there is not probably a lot of other stuff, and moved to fish & chips shop. We found one just at the beginning of the city, ordered the workers meal and guys even wanted the large portion (for extra 50 cents). We paid some strange price (which didn’t have anything to do with the price on display) and were shocked when we saw our portions – the „large“ portion was another normal portion – extra fish and extra portion of chips. Weren’t able to manage it for lunch nor dinner, we had it even for breakfast.
Then moved to Ocean beach, which is really nice but was full of people and the waves weren’t any special. Just the road there is interesting in its last stage, where it goes steeply down and is wide enough just for one car. Views from Te Mata Peak, our next destination, were awesome, especially with the sunset going on. They have a lot of tracks there, some special one for mountainbiking and they looked really hard, not sure I would take them.
It was getting late and we needed to do some shopping – found supermarket in Hastings with wifi spot next to it, so we were able to check our emails and order ferry at the same time as do some shopping. Wonderful place. At petrol station we took fill up our water tanks as well, but when we sniffed at them they smelled like a petrol, maybe we could try to put them in car and it would go. We poured them out and took some other water inside the station and it was much better.
We took a quick look in a map and found a hill with fantastic name – Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu. That must be our next destination. Take another look in all of our guide books but nobody mentioned this hill and as evening took place we decided to gave up and go directly to Wellington, with some sleeping place on the way there.