The rain that was forecast definitely arrived in the night although we didn’t have the thunderstorm they forecast it was really raining hard. Luckily it had calmed down by the time we got up but it was still raining during breakfast and while we were loading up the car but thankfully we have a carport so we didn’t get wet. We were on the road just after 9am, unfortunately because there are not many roads in New Zealand the first part of the drive was across the volcanic plain we did yesterday. As it turned out this was a good thing as we did the whole of that part of the journey in the clouds and couldn’t really see anything, luckily by the time we got to the part of the journey that we haven’t done before the rain had stopped and the clouds lifted. The landscape has completely changed again, we have gone from the dramatic alpine volcanic rock faces to rolling hills and very deep gorges and valleys. The drive took about 4 hours and on the way we actually saw the logging operation in action where they had set up a pulley system to get the trees up the side of the hill, all very interesting, but it did look slow work. We had quite a few scenic view stops and a longer stop for our picnic lunch so we eventually arrived in Napier about 3.30. We have another very nice apartment looking out to the sea so we unpacked the car then took a walk to the visitor information centre to pick up the self guided Art Deco walk of Napier to do tomorrow, we got a few other bits of information as well then took a walk back along the seafront to our apartment.
