Volcanos, Earthquakes and Lunch

Russell was so restful that we decided to stay a few days in another town but a very different one. If Russell is old New Zealand and Auckland is new New Zealand then art deco Napier is somewhere between the two. We drove back south via Auckland. The north island has Auckland as its hub while the south island is spread around the coasts. In one way its the same thing - the island is so thin at Auckland that it is on both coasts.

Driving down we were very aware of the differences between the north here and the south island. Mountains have been replaced by interfolded hills and valleys. The land has a much more managed look but is at the same time more exotic by being closer to the equator. The bush is thick with palms, giant ferns and native trees, especially the rata which is still in flower here and covered with scarlet foliage.

We noticed a site offering 'used houses for sale', not sure if it was a takeaway service! We also passed ...

which I remember from our last visit to NZ. Then it looked very naff, now it is a 'sheep theme park' and looks quite slick. I found myself wondering if sheep could visit and what are the 101 things you can do with a sheep ? (If you have any unusual suggestions please keep them to yourself.) The only thing missing was what seems to be becoming a standard for tourist sites, a giant model made out of corrugated iron.

Corrugated iron roofs are standard here, they are noisy when it rains but a local told me it is a comforting sound and Kiwis feel bereft when in England because they can't hear the rain on the roof. The second use of 'corrie' is to make giant statues. I mentioned the Invercargill elephant weeks back, we also saw a cinema with King Kong holding Fay Wray in his fist and assorted others including one town with dogs, cats, kiwi, etc. Fortunately I can't remember where the town is or what it's called. Even they seemed to have realised it was just silly and had given up. But why no giant sheep at Sheep World? One our last visit we'd also passed Kiwi Fruit World, an obvious choice for corrugated iron, but there was no sign of it so perhaps it's defunct. Well, can you think of anything exciting to do with a kiwi fruit? (No, I don't want to know, life is too short.)

We spent a night in Hamilton, a pleasant, leafy university town on the Waikato river about which I can think of little to say. We ate in an Turkish restaurant called the 'Saharan Tent'. OK, Turkey isn't actually in the Sahara but what's being a couple of thousand miles out when you are on the other side of the world? Like confusing Australia and NZ and who'd complain about that? Maybe Hamilton University doesn't have a Geography Department.

Next day we passed Lake Taupo near the centre of the north island and the most volcanic part of NZ. The lake is the crater of an enormous extinct volcano. The mountains near it look like proper volcanos, as a child would draw them, truncated cones with deep channels running down them (missing only the fire and smoke fortunately). In prehistoric times an erruption here covered the whole island with ash and extinguished all life, about 2000 years ago a more minor disturbance affected the skies over China and was even detectable in Europe. But it's extinct now. Just say that with a clear loud voice and everyone will believe you. "It is extinct". Don't worry, no problem. Except for a couple of acres of bush which have started bubbling with boiling mud and spurting steam and hydrogen sulphide into the air. That can be turned into a tourist attraction.

We did visit "The Craters of the Moon" as the site is called.

This isn't mist - it's a mixture of steam and hydrogen sulphide!

The Kiwi Space Programme is obviously not very far advanced so I'll just point out that on the moon a) there is no volcanic activity, b) there is no water and so no steam, c) it is cold not hot. And there are no blackberry bushes as far as I know. But really I'd like to have a word not with astronauts but the company who thought of using thermal power to generate electricity at Taupo. They extracted water for cooling, lowering the water table and causing the Craters of the Moon to appear. Is it really sensible to mess with what is potentially the world's most violent volcano? Oh, it's extinct, no problem then ....

After volcanos, Napier is an earthquake place. A lot of it was under the sea until a 'quake in the 1930s. Afterwards it was mostly rebuilt in art deco style.
 

This could be seen as a big style statement by NZ but bear in mind that art deco is cheap and more earthquake proof than most alternatives. It's based on a reinforced concrete frame so there are no great blocks of stone or concrete to fall off in small quakes. We did the official tour which lasted nearly two hours. If I never see another sunburst, fountain, ziggurat, streamline or naked woman flying through the air trailing yards of chiffon, at least I have a good reservoir of memory to fall back on. Actually at one point I hid for a few minutes and bought a biscuit before rejoining the tour. I got a very stern look from the tour guide. Napier has (by coincidence) a very stylish beach. There is no sand, just every size of pebble, all in the same shade of grey. Minimalist but classy.

Napier is really two towns, we stayed at the north end on Scinde Island. It is no longer an island, in fact the earthquake was the making of Napier, quite literally because the land adjacent to Scinde Island rose about a metre making it possible for the town to expand. The house we stayed in was pre-earthquake but like most on the Island is wooden; wooden houses tend to have enough 'give' to resist the shock waves.
Being on the edge of the hill and surrounded by trees it wasn't easy to photograph but here is the view from our window at least


The name 'Scinde' is the NZ version of 'Sind' (the Indian province) taken by Lord Napier. The marine parade has an arch with a quote from the man "Courage is the thing. When courage goes, everything goes". As a tourist - and especially after the tour - I'm inclined to substitute 'legs' for 'courage'. But I like the quote, much more down to earth and what you expect of a soldier. Lord Napier is much more famous for his message to the Foreign Office after taking Sind. He send one word "Peccavi" confident that everyone there would immediately recognise the Latin for "I have sinned". Do soldiers still make puns in Latin?

Apart from the earthquake and the art deco, Napier has Seahorse World and Opossum World. The seahorses are bred for export to China - need I say more of what happens to them there? Opossum World sells items made from possum fur (often blended with merino wool). Apart from being the only place in NZ to call possums by their scientific name 'oppossum', the shop's other claim to fame is the most tacky displays and tableaus. One shows the life cycle of the possum made with stuffed possums and pickled baby possums (like kangeroos, possums are born very undeveloped and have to climb to their mother's pouch where they grow). If you are interested in embryos floating in formaldehyde and badly stuffed animals this may be the place for you but before buying any possum skin do check out the tableau which shows a man doing the skinning. Remember, sheep only have to be sheared.

One other thing Napier has is wine. It is part of the Hawkes Bay area and there are lots of wineries (which I thought looked less regimented than those in Marlborough). We had lunch at 'The Mission' sitting under big umbrellas on a lawn overlooking the vinyards. The Swiss waiter discussed each dish with us and suggested an appropriate wine for each. He firmly distinguished between my fish choice and Eleanor's. One would need a more intense sauvignon blanc but perhaps a chardonnay for the other (chardonnays had been over exposed but a local oaked variety ...). He was happy to suggest several alternatives to accompany ostrich fillet, pointing out the New Zealand preference for the softer Merlots might seem a bit insipid to Europeans. I like eating like this, an expert to tell you what to eat and drink and wine by the glass so you can each have a different one for each course. It took the rest of the day to recover. And I take back what I wrote in an earlier blog about posh restaurants at wineries. I think they are great. A week earlier and we could have seen Rod Stewart at this one so we had the added pleasure of missing yet another rendition of "I am sailing" and "Maggie".

In the taxi, the driver told me his nephew had trained as a chef but had given it up after being quite successful for a couple of years. The lad hadn't realized till he started the job that he wouldn't get weekends off! Now he worked as a labourer in the vinyard and enjoyed it much more: outside, real work and free at weekends - a proper New Zealand job.