Happy New Year! If you combine the revelry of New Year’s Eve and July 4th fireworks in the US, you’ll have an idea of how this holiday is celebrated here. As I told one patrolling policeman near the beach at about 8:30 PM that eve, at home all the partiers stay inside, because it’s too cold. Here they spill out all over! There was lots of partying going on, including at the bach next to us...we managed to sleep through most of it (love those little blue earplugs!), so we could get up the next morning for our weekend road trip.
We drove across the entire country, from one coast to the other, in about 3 hours on Saturday morning. Or, we could have if we hadn’t stopped enroute! We happened across a sign saying Waimarie Alpacas and luckily we found them at home. What a wonderful happenstance visit! I was interested because I’ve knitted with alpaca which is fabulously soft and considered a luxury fiber. Kevin was interested because it’s a farm! Ten years ago this woman bought nine pregnant females, thinking this was to be a hobby. (This also was after her husband suggested she get two castrated males, that’s it.) She had never been a farmer, though her husband was, nor had she been a fiber artist or creative in any way, she says. Now they breed them, have won lots of ribbons, and have a herd of 75 animals! AND she has a studio with NZ’s first FELTloom, a huge electric needle felting loom with which she makes felted alpaca wallhangings, knee rugs (we call them lap robes!), shawls, and fabric with which one can sew up a jacket, etc. Her mother knits hats and she adds felted flowers, etc, etc. We purchased products, saw the animals, felt the shorn fleeces in the barn which are for sale, and “had a cuppa” with Ross and Christine. Just lovely! We both thoroughly enjoyed meeting them and their animals and hearing their story.
We’re staying in a “tourist flat” at a campground here. Basically a tourist flat is a room with a bed, and ours has a small fridge, sink, toaster, hot pot and dishes. The bathroom is as you’d expect to find at any campground, ours is across the gravelled parking lot. A communal kitchen and BBQ is available, though we’ve found wonderful restaurants instead :) Yesterday we started the day out by taking in the Hastings Farmer’s Market, about 15 minutes up the coast from Napier. Oh, it was so lovely too! A beautiful morning in a mostly shaded grassy area, with about 50 vendors, including all sorts of produce and value-added products - chocolate, wine, preserves, coffee, wine, cheese, wine...and music and picnicking in the centre (as they spell it here). If you haven’t guessed it, the Hawke’s Bay region is known for it’s produce, and grapes, although we’ve heard they’ve overplanted in grapes now. In the afternoon, we went on a boat for a snorkeling trip; now this is the Pacific! Let’s just say it was a little rough, and we’ve had better snorkeling. We hung around the harbour for dinner at a great Laotian-Thai restaurant, and talked to a Kiwi woman whose cousins grew up near Cedar Rapids!
Today, on Monday, January 3, we had two amazing, fun experiences. We drove south a little towards Cape Kidnappers (so named by Captain James Cook, after Maori kidnapped a Tahitian deckhand boy, who they later released back to him) to ride on a trailer behind a big tractor, then hike up and up and up to see a gannet colony. These are amazing members of the booby family :) whose children’s first flight is to Australia! There are four colonies of them in this area, totalling about 17,000 birds. The tractor ride was a blast, with crazy (but knowledgeable about the gannets and surrounding geology) tractor driver guys who made it alot of fun. Tractor choreography, in and out of the water and over the rocky beach. Next on our agenda, just by chance, we drove to the adjacent place, the Clifton Sheepstation. This is a historic NZ sheepstation since 1859 when 13,500 acres was purchased from “the crown” (of England), and is still owned by members of the same family; the 6th generation now is growing up there. We stood in the historic shearing shed, which now houses artifacts and has a shearing demo. We were two of four people in attendance, so got to get up close and personal! They still have a herd of about 6,000 sheep, which is way down in numbers as is true across the country. Leslie’s learning a lot about wool! I did decide before we left, I am NOT going to start spinning it. However, when in New Zealand…..????
I hope this works...please go to http://picasaweb.google.com/116819527466773721245/NapierWeekend# to see pics from our Napier weekend.
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