Day 7 ( Sunday 22nd December 2024) landfall at last, Napier New Zealand

 Today we docked in Napier New Zealand, Hurray!

We ate breakfast and headed out into the bright and sunny day ashore. It was nice to be on land and in New Zealand once more, certainly a happy place for us. 

Today, we booked a winery tour of Hawks Bay, which visited Abbey Wines and Sileni Wines. Our bus driver  loaded us on 15 minutes early so we got away early.   He took us for guided tour through Napier and surrounding valley to the wineries. Absolutely New Zealand like gorgeous countryside, which makes you almost want immigrate to New Zealand.

Sileni

The first winery was Sileni, that was made up several wineries on the North and South Island. Delightful wines, will certainly look for the them back in Australia. We considered buying some wine, but 29% Tarif, and freight worth as much as $30-35NZDs bottle made prohibitive to import. Very sad.

The next winery was a family owned, and produced lovely wines as well. After so much wine, we enjoyed cheese board provided by the winery. Very friendly people. Again, we intend to look for their wines back home.

Napier itself is the art deco capital of New Zealand having be rebuilt in the style after a massive earthquake in 1931. 

Certainly want to revisit this area again sometime in the future.