Day 11 - Leaky Napier
Not only did we have a disappointing toilet incident when we arrived, but the bloody thing then leaked. Fortunately only number 1's but still, yikes, yuck, yeugh. And then a roll of kitchen towel..
And welcome to Saturday, we headed (first to a camper dump) then straight to Napier to find the Saturday farmers market and beautiful beach. Napier was eliminated by an earthquake in the 30s and everything built since then has been 'great gatsbyesque'. It's a beautiful city, love it. Well worth the visit and putting a few quid on parking.
After strolling around town for a couple of hours we grabbed the van and headed away from Napier towards the vineyards, the first stop being Crab Farm Winery. A cute little vineyard surrounded what was essentially a restaurant, the barmen to busy making drinks for their paying customers to worry about us 'testing wines' before we buy. We browsed the shelves containing their various wines and settled of a fizzy pink number for $20. From here we had spotted one more cellar door that we thought would be worth trying, Esk Valley vineyard. As we drove up the long driveway, rolling mounds were covered in lush green vines, all the way up to their shop, with the whole site being bathed in glorious sunshine. We reached the top and jumped out of Kylie, turned and took in the spectacular view from the top of the azure ocean just the other side of the road...'picturesque' doesn't quite do it justice. When we entered the shop we knew we had found what we were looking for. Two passionate and experienced ladies fluttered behind the counter, pouring various wines for different customers, explaining in detail about the wines and the scents and flavours they evoked. We had our turn and started with Riesling, then Pinot Gris, the Sav Blanc, a Rose and finally the Chardonnay. Clarkey even had room for a sample of the Syrah, which was rich, curranty and plummy. We purchased a bottle of Chardonnay and made our way to the campsite, which we luckily booked on the way past earlier.
Wine chilling, we grabbed our beach bag and headed towards the sea, which backed onto the campsite. The beach was black pebbles and the sea was a glorious blue with some rough waves just as it reached land, keeping us out of the water. We read our books for a couple of hours like rotisserie chickens, and occasionally went and dipped our toes in the ocean. At one point we grabbed the newly purchased frisbee from its packaging and started to casually pass it to each other along the shore line. A few throws went astray but the tide returned them kindly to us, on most occasions that is....after a dozen throws, one of Clarkey's went towards and into a wave, thinking it would return in the next wave we waited, and waited, and waited...it never returned. The sea tricked us and took our poor frisbee for its own; we could see it floating around, never coming closer but it was just too far out for us to safely retrieve.
That killed the fun and the sun was going down so we headed back to Kylie. We made camp on a picnic bench outside our van and cracked open the fizz, whilst writing the blog and prepping dinner. We necked the bottle in under 30 and in our wisdom started on the gin and rum. Clarkey delivered an amazing King Fish supper on the camp BBQ, with greens and corn. We chatted to a very nice Kiwi cooking on the next BBQ, enquiringly where we have been and that he lived in Manchester for a while. Dinner eaten we headed back to Kylie for more drinks and card games.
Spotting a potentially beautiful sunset, we raced to the beach and parked ourselves on some driftwood, essentially a whole tree trunk. The colours of the sky a deep grey, entering a light pink, then Clarkey had spotted something on the horizon. Just creeping above the sea we were gifted with a beautiful 'moon rise', starting a deep orangey/red as it inched above the ocean and turning into its usually cheesy yellow as it reached high above the land. We both felt like we had witnessed nature at its best and headed back to camp before we were eaten alive by the mozzies.
By this point I can confirm that Clarkey was 'pished' to put it politely and the extent of our card playing was Pontoon/stick or twist. Thoroughly exhausted from being beaten by the dealer Clarkey needed to sleep off the gin, so we hit the hay.