Our first road trip!
As per plan, we swung by the Porirua Early Morning Market on Saturday in some really awful rain. However, it was both productive and fruitful (puns kind of intended), and we drove away laden with delicious things to eat.
At around noon, we headed out in our faithful Zigfrond to Napier. As an Illinoisan, I am used to flat lands as far as the eye can see, so New Zealand has been a wealth of scenery for me. For a short stretch of land, maybe 10 or so kilometers, Highway 1 traces the west coast, and you can see the waves crashing up onto the rocks at your left with the land sloping up to your right. I've been up and down that way a few times but it never ceases to arrest my attention, and Saturday was no exception. It certainly didn't hurt that the weather started to clear up, and by the time we were heading towards Palmerston North, the sun was out and making the entire landscape look like a magazine spread. (But better, because it is real life!)
Kapiti Island from Highway 1
We drove through plains with mountains in the distance, rolling hills, and river gorges. The sun came and went and came back again, and I was in a state of suspended rapture. It's trite aphorism that the adventure is not in the destination but in the journey, but this was a perfect example of it. The entire ride was so amazing, it was almost an anticlimax to finally arrive in Napier.
And now, fact time! New Zealand sits on a faultline, and it's bit hit by several major earthquakes in recorded history. On February 3, 1931, a 7.8 earthquake hit about two miles north of Napier. As there were no real building codes, much less in case of an earthquake, Napier and much of the Hawke's Bay region was devastated. However, as it was also the thirties, Art Deco was in fashion and many of the buildings were designed in the style.
The Art Deco-ness is played up in some places -- you can apparently take a tour in a vintage car if you so desired and there's an Art Deco Festival each year -- but for the most part the charm is in the casualness: the curl of a railing or the color of the brick. There are really lovely details in the most surprising of places, and many of the billboard advertisements posted around town are written in a wonderfully stylish font.
In front of the Daily Telegraph building in Napier
I don't want to detract from that bit of cultural history, but I have to mention the most peculiar and unexpected point in our journey. For the most part, Napier is a really lovely sea side little town with Spanish Mission and Art Deco buildings. However, if you walk up Marine Parade towards the city centre, there is a large shop window with the seemingly inexplicable name of Opossum World.
It turns out the Opossum World is exactly what you would expect. On the storefront, it advertises in bright yellow both opossum garments and an immersive educational environment on the history and biology of opossums. Claire thinks the signs are mostly earnest, I think it is at least partially facetious. It's difficult to say for sure.
In either case, once you enter, you come across a giant statue draped in opossum pelts and racks of quite nice shirts, jackets, hats, and gloves (of possum wool, naturally). If you walk further, past the slightly odd display of possums dressed in anything from flapper dresses to aviators you enter the immersive educational environment. It has a cool little fake forest with trees and light up displays of possums terrorizing kiwi birds and so on. Once you get past that, you come across a museum-like display of the life cycle of opossums complete with bizarrely taxidermied opossums. I would hate to be wrong, but the quality of the taxidermy is such that I have a hard time believing in good faith that the store is entirely earnest. I have never seen such terrible taxidermy.
Let me say now that I am not a person prone to contemplating the stuffing and mounting of dead animals, but the quality was distractingly awful.
I mean, really.
If you keep walking, the exhibit on possum trappers included the back end of a red car with five stuffed opossums standing on top, songbooks clutched in their little hands. If you press a red button, a song starts up. (Surprisingly, the possums do not sway or dance or move at all. Perhaps the taxidermist couldn't figure out how to wire them?) Also, by the tyre of the car, someone had placed a felled possum, accompanied by another one with a sling and a cast around its leg. Again, I would hate to be wrong, but with that body of evidence, I have to believe that it's at least a little bit facetious. Surely.
Anyhow, we did not end up buying any quality Merino Possum, but we did learn about the history of possums and that there is such a thing as Merino Possum. (Merino Possum, to inject a little learning into this, is a blend of Merino wool and possum yarn. Apparently it is smooth and soft and warmer than Merino wool alone. Interesting!) It was also an unexpected break from the general classiness of Napier and the Hawke's Bay region.
(Unexpected enough, it turns out, to write about at length.)
Sunday turned out to be a day of eating. For lunch, we went to Ujazi Cafe and spent about an hour and a half making incoherent noises at the food. My flat white was actually a little bit disappointing, but the meal more than made up for it (and Claire's chai latte was amazing). We split some sort of Moroccan chicken sandwich and a seafood chowder. I don't actually remember what the sandwich was called, but it was enormous and suitably filling, especially when supplemented by the extremely rich soup. I am reasonably sure that the meal could have comfortably fed a third person, but I am a glutton.
A terrible picture of some wonderful food.
Later, we passed through Hastings and stopped by the amazing Rush Monro's ice cream parlour. I am not an ice cream connoisseur by any means, but it was amazing. 100% natural ingredients, hand-churned, and made of sunshine and happiness. Yum. Among its many other excellent qualities, New Zealand really does ice cream right. (Kapiti Island up above, by the way, also produces ice cream that makes me rethink my usual ambivalence towards the stuff.)
The way back, we took a different route, and I was boggling the entire route. Hawke's Bay is wine country and the climate is perplexingly different from the often grey weather in Wellington. It's also really beautiful. (On the other hand, Hawke's Bay is also across Rimutaka Range, which boasts a thirteen kilometer stretch of TERROR. Given that I am used to flat roads and a much smaller car, maneuvering Zigfrond through kilometers of twisting highway skirting the edge of mountains freaked me out a tad. But back on the original hand, it was also really beautiful.)
All told, it was a great weekend and a really fun trip. We even ate crappy gas station food, not out of hunger, but to signify that we have indeed Road Tripped.
I know, I know. Belaboring a point. But seriously.
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