Day 47. Arataki Holiday Park. Bees and Deco.

Up early for a few lengths of the not-quite-olympic-size swimming pool. There's a sign next to the pool asking people to take a shower before bathing 'using soap and water and paying particular attention to your bottom'.

Love it. We're definitely staying another night.

Hiked up the 1000 metre Te Mata Peak in the morning. Commanding a spectacular view over the surrounding plains and Hawke Bay this sacred Maori site succeeded in both knocking and knacking us out.

Also had time to visit the Aritaki Honey Centre before lunch. This was more fun than you might imagine; they have a glass covered cross-section of a hive where you can spy on all the bee action. We then sat through a 10 minute bee movie, studied a poster depicting bee physiology and finally took our places for the big bee lecture.

Few people escape without buying some kind of bee paraphanalea from the gift shop. Wend included.

In the afternoon we went into Napier, a town famed for its many fine Art Deco builings. Much of the centre was wiped out in a big earthquake in 1931 meaning the subsequent years of rebuilding coincided with the period when Deco was all the rage.


Its great.

The main shopping areas and promenade remain largely unspoilt, my only gripe being the intrusion of contemporary signage at street level. The golden arches of MacBloodyDonalds causing particular offence.



Also enjoyed a round of crazy golf on the sea-front. After a storming start complacency set in and I almost allowed Wend to catch me on the back 9. Almost.

Day 46. Arataki holiday park. Hi-di-hi.

Bade the Fishers a fond farewell this morning and set off on the 5 hour drive up to Hawke Bay (3 hours in a car apparantly, but the van ain't no Aston Martin).

Most of the trip was through unremarkable farming country so we saw lots of sheep again and little of anything else. Necked a couple of commendable pies though in a little town called Featherston. Chicken and Veg for the missus, Mince and Cheese for me.

Slight reservations as to whether the latter combo belongs in a savoury pastry.

Found a charming campsite near Havelock North. I know 'charming' is a girly adjective, but it really does sum this place up. Designed and built in the '50s and obviously never added to or altered since. We kept expecting to hear someone announcing the start of the nobbly knees competition over the Tanoy.

Day 45. Wellington. To Te Papa.

Te Papa is THE must see museum in New Zealand. A vast building dominating the waterfront providing an inspiring, interactive look at the country's history and culture. Put together less than a decade ago for a cool 300 million dollars, John reckoned a day wouldn't be enough time to cover it's 6 floors and do it justice.

And he was right.

Among the many treasures is a huge collection of Maori artifacts; canoes, weapons, ceremonial garb and so on. These items are interesting enough in their own right, but when given context via the multi-media screens dotted throughout the building, they really come alive.

Other highlights included the earthquake simulator (Wellington straddles a less than stable fault line), a section dedicated to innovative kiwi design and an entire floor given over to how the early European settlers coped with various tribulations.

Other people's hardship always a winner in my book.

Went to the cinema in the evening. We had a split jury on the merits of 'Borat'. Me and John liked it, Wend thought it had it's moments, and Brandi hated it.

Bloke thing I suppose.

Day 44. Wellington. High art, giant slaloms.

Sam Taylor-Wood. Saviour of the british art scene or over-hyped media whore?

The easiest way for us to make a judgement would have been to attend the recent retrospective of her work while it was showing at The Baltic. A harder way, would be to miss it, blame each other for not being better organised, then catch the show after it transferred to the other side of the world.

The verdict? While some of her stuff went completely over our tiny little philistine heads, the majority of the work was great. We especially liked the 'Crying men' portraits - 27 candid shots of some of the world's most respected actors bubbling their eyes out. I'm sure there's all sorts of sub-text intended; 'the underlying vulnerability of the stereotypical macho male exterior' or some such twaddle. But we just thought they were nice pictures.

A couple of her moving image things were good too. The angel floating above a string quartet managing to amuse and mesmerise.

So yes, if the thing ever comes back to The Baltic, or somewhere in London for that matter, we'd recommend going.



Went back to Inia's in the evening where we met his cousin Simon. Another quirky character who, among other things is a proficient enough skiier to have represented NZ at a couple of Winter Olympics. He's retired from the sport now though, so it'll be downhill all the way from now on.

Day 43. Wellington. More beer and a lot of waterfront.

A decade or so ago Newcastle and Gateshead woke up to the fact that they were sitting on a huge, marketable asset.

The quayside.

Like countless other cities throughout the world they cleaned up the old warehouses, threw up the obligatory penthouse apartments, built a gallery or two and generally made the waterfront the coolest part of town to live, socialise and generally hang out in.

Wellington is no exception. In fact, with most of the town spread out across such a large harbour frontage, it has seems to have taken the concept to an impressive, different level.



We spent a lovely afternoon walking the dog down into town and along the various quays, stopping only for emergency lager rations and pizza.

It's a hilly old place mind, so the walk back soon became a trip on the famous Wellington cable car. A quick kip to recharge the batteries and we were out again, this time with the whole Fisher clan, for a nice bit of sushi.

We like this place a lot.

Day 42. Wellington. At home with the Fishers.

Despite the forcast of strong winds on the Cook Strait we had a smooth ferry crossing from Picton to Wellington. Bit of an old tug, if truth be told, but an enjoyable trip out of the Sounds and an impressive view as we came into the harbour at the other end.



Put the van into mothballs when we arrived as we'll be staying with my old mucker John while in Wellington.

John has been living here for the past 15 years and in that time has seen Wellington transformed from a fairly staid, provincial outpost to New Zealand's most buzzing, up and coming City.

He's also managed to find himself a lovely house right next to the Botanical Gardens (yes folks, yet more sodding BG's), an even lovelier daughter called Jasmine, a crazy dog and a large and eclectic circle of mates, a few of whom we had the great pleasure of meeting this evening.



One of the guys, Inia, rents this massive gaff which acts as the local HQ for anyone in the neighbourhood who fancies listening or playing some music, drinking copious quantities of real ale or having a smoke. It's a brilliant place. We ended up staying and talking nonsense until the wee small hours.

As well as being incredibly hospitable, Inia turned out to be a very interesting bloke. John worked with him a few years back at Saatchis and they've remained good friends, but he now teaches Maori 'Kapa Haka', which is a combination of song, dance and martial arts. At one point, after a particularly large glug on the Ale, he had us all singing a traditional folk song.

Can't imagine it sounded too clever, but seemed like an excellent idea at the time.

John took us on a long detour on the already long walk home to check out a glow-worm colony. Glad he did in the end, hundreds of them twinkling their little bums off made for a bright end to a good night.

Day 41. Whites Bay. Hunter gatherer Smith.

Passed our last day on the South Island in Whites Bay. A pretty little place named after a slave who jumped ship in 1828 and set up a shack on the beach, hanging with the Maoris and generally enjoying not being a slave.

It's one of the few beaches in the area safe for swimming. Too cold for even a paddle at the minute, but probably rammed in the middle of summer.



Cranked the wilderness thing up a notch or two when I announced I'd be hunting for our lunch. Kissed my cavewoman goodbye and left her tending the single ring calor gas stove before heading into the unknown. Returned triumphantly 10 minutes later with a handful of green-lipped mussels I'd expertly snared in a rockpool less than 50 yards from the van.

Bloody lovely they were too.

Followed the feast with some locally grown Kiwi fruit that Wend had plucked from a supermarket shelf 2 days earlier.