After our lengthy stay in Gisborne over new year we headed further south to our sixth stop near Napier, which was to be a much more fleeting visit.
We stayed at a delightful little holiday park on the remote Waipatiki Beach, a little over 30 minutes drive from Napier itself. The park was called, quite, predictably, Waipatiki Beach Holiday Park, and had the added quirk of being a semi-active farm, complete with a couple of pigs (who Hannah was very fond of!), horses and some rabbits.
Another bonus was the shallow fresh water stream, through which we paddled to access the beach. However, an alternative method was across the ‘pontoon’, a cool little raft type thing which you manually transport to the other side of the stream by pulling the ropes! Simple things!
With the site’s remoteness along with the beach location and the surrounding landscapes (a combination of hills, rocks and forest), we both quickly decided that this was our favourite campsite so far. The only downside being the distance from Napier, although this obviously had its benefits too.
Soon after arriving, we headed into Napier for a few hours and grabbed some lunch – a full rack of ribs no less (half a rack for Hannah of course) at the Speights Ale House on the Wharf, a little out of the city in a nice spot on the waterfront. We’d eaten at a Speights before in Auckland (Ponsonby) with it being a chain of high standard pubs.
Afterwards, we drove into the city centre for a walk around. From our limited time there, we concluded it’s a pleasant enough city, but nothing particularly spectacular to make us wish we had longer. There’s probably a lot more to see and do than we knew about of course.
It’s worth mentioning that a feature of Napier is the Art Deco style architecture on show throughout the city, which came about through a rebuild as a result of a devastating earthquake that destroyed the city in the early 30s.
Anyway, we loved our short, one night stop at Waipatiki Beach and are glad we ventured to that corner of New Zealand.
We have since traveled back up north a little to Taupo, home to the gigantic Lake Taupo and another adventure hotspot, similarly to the not-too-far-away Rotorua. First impressions are fantastic and we have a lot planned for our three nights here (hint – Taupo is big on skydiving!), so more on that will follow in the not too distant future!