February 21st, Tuesday,library of Wellington. Tomorrow we will take the 9AM ferry to the South Island. We arrived here after spending some time in Napier with an ex-colleague from Stefan. It was great to spend some time in a nice house with all the luxuries :-)) and not have to worry about the next camping spot.
Before arriving in Napier we did the Tongariro Alpine Crossing walk. Really wonderful ! Tongariro National Park is the oldest National Park in NZ and UNESCO world heritage since 1991. In order to prevent the selling off to European settlers several Maori chiefs (Iwi) decided in 1887 to give the grounds to the Crown under the condition that it would remain a protected area. The Tongariro Alpine Crossing is widely regarded as one of the world’s best one-day hikes.(19.4KM) We started walkig at 8 AM and arrived at the car park at 1.15PM with a short stop to eat our lunch. We did not have any rain that day but the next 4 days it would rain off and on.
Our visit to Napier was a little rained out but we enjoyed the Art Deco WE, the old cars in town and all the people dressed up in Gatsby style ! We walked to Cape Kidnapper’s (20KM along the beach) and had a beautiful (rainy) view of the Black Reef Gannet colony.
More pictures from Art Deco WE in the next blog.