The problem with New Zealand

"The problem with New Zealand," our friend Rob* tells us, "is that everything is so stinking beautiful all the time." If that's true, it's been a day fraught with trouble. The five of us (4 of us plus Rob) are in Napier, after driving yesterday from the west side of the North Island (where we live) to the east. We arrived after a meandering and magnificent drive to our pre-arranged hotel which turned out to be a depressing pit. We five went straight to work in the frigid and ugly lounge room of the nasty hotel, Rob with the yellow pages, Naomi and I with the guidebooks, Michael with the cell phone. An hour later we were ensconced in lovely semi-luxury at a motel up the street. A huge improvement.

Napier is known for its fantastic art deco architecture, which it has because of a massive earthquake in 1931 which levelled the downtown area and killed scads of people. Now it’s a time capsule, the storefronts done up in cool pastels, the wide streets filled with cafes and meandering tourists. Today we wandered into food shops and ticky-tacky tourist shops (for Naomi’s pleasure), and stayed a long time to play at the playground which perches alongside the sea.

Then we grew tired of looking at the light on the distant lovely cliffs, and we decided to make our way in that direction, and we drove towards Cape Kidnappers which is much much more beautiful than it sounds. After a brief visit to a winery where, in addition to the grapes on the vine, we saw avocados and lemons and olives growing from the trees, we found our way as far as our car could drive out to Cape Kidnappers (which is still some distance from the cape). We walked along the shore, watching the sunlight move along the limestone cliffs, hunting for shells along the shoreline, and listening to the clacking sound of the Pacific ocean moving over the large, smooth rocks which lie in the place of sand along these beaches. Then back into Napier for a magnificent dinner in one of the Victorian houses along the ocean front which escaped the earthquake. A day meant to treat all the senses.

Although Rob jokes about “the problem” with the beauty here, there is truth inside his joking. There is just about no option for someone who wants to escape from the natural beauty of this place. Today, in the cloudy chilly afternoon, we saw a fat rainbow dipping down into the sea, and tonight, in the slanting evening sun, the autumnal grape-vines turned from pale yellow to deep gold as the sun turned the sky a brilliant fuchsia. There wasn’t a place to rest my eyes that wasn’t remarkably beautiful—on the ocean reflecting the clouds, on the rows of fruit trees heavy with fruit, on the distant layers of hills which catch the clouds and hold the light. All beauty, all the time.

The pictures are from today and yesterday and aren't as plentiful as they should be because of internet problems. Sorry. So there's the gang in the minivan getting ready to go, and Naomi and me up a tree in the Napier public square. There'll be more pics that are more beautiful tomorrow!

*For those of you who haven’t been following closely, Rob is one of our oldest and most spectacular friends who has come to live with us for a while from the US. We’re not sure when he’ll go back but the lobby is pushing for his immigration.