Travel blog: Art deco Napier to the Bay of Islands

Anna Kainberger is taking a year-out from her career to travel in south-east Asia, Australasia and the South Pacific, along with Hawaii and the USA. This month she is reporting from New Zealand. Here is her 21st blog entry:

After Wellington I travelled swiftly up to Auckland with an overnight stop in Napier.

Due to an earth quake in 1931 Napier was left with a largely destroyed city centre and nowadays is known as New Zealand's Art Deco city, as it was rebuilt in what was at that time a common style.

I didn't really care much for the art deco style houses, I am Austrian and have lived in Vienna now and again, so art deco is nothing I need to go and see in New Zealand.

But we had a chat with out hostel owner and asked him for advice on what to do in lovely Napier and he suggested the following: Go beer and cider tasting at the light house brewery, which is located around the corner from a nine-hole golf course, that allows beer on the course and then cycle back into town.

He also offered to take us with his minivan. That idea sounded lovely and so we loaded the hostel's six bikes into the van and off we went.

Cider and beer tasting costs NZ$12 (£4.75) for a crate of six halves of either drink. For me it was cider, for the boys it was beer.

We continued until we had tasted everything and then ordered some chips before actually pushing our bikes to the nearby nine-hole golf course to start playing the most ridiculous, but at the same time most fun, round of golf in my whole life.

I had not played golf in ten years and some of the boys had never played at all. Then we had a guy from Switzerland who was a real pro, with actual knowledge about swings and clubs and irons.

So of that proved a hilarious mixture of characters and temperaments when it came to getting that putt right.

We laughed a lot. And thank god, this was not the traditional stuck up golf course, where you have to have the right shoes and tartan chequered golf shorts, because we just rocked up in the usual surfer inspired shorts, flip flops and t-shirts.

The good thing about New Zealand in March is that the days are light and they are light for quite some time, the sun sets at around 8-9pm and so you can make the most of your days.

When we had finished playing we cycled back to our lovely hostel by the sea, facing really strong headwinds but at the same time admiring the sunset and Pacific Ocean, which was fairly rough on that particular day.

From Napier we drove further north via Taupo and Roturura, reaching Mount Maunganui very late that same afternoon.
Magic bus recommended at least one overnight stop in each one of the places and there sure were a lot of things to do, such as zorbing down a hill in a huge plastic ball, doing an overnight wildlife walk with Maori guides or petting lion cubs.

But I had heard rather good things about the little seaside town of Mount Maunganui and its excellent surf - so I headed there and planned on staying for three nights, before heading further north to Auckland.

Mount Maunganui is a lovely little area near Tauranga with a small peak. It's famous for surfing, beach fun and chilling out.

It also is a hot spot for New Year's Eve celebrations with the population reaching 150,000 over the Christmas and NYE period each year.

The nightlife was supposed to be good, our hostel seemed nice and clean; I was looking forward to being on a beach again and also I wanted to learn to surf.

Little did I know that the weather god had different plans for me, as it was pouring with rain for the next three days. And when it was not pouring rain it was rather unpleasant outside with a lot of wind and fairly cold weather.

So there my surfing plans ended and I spent a couple of days doing nothing, apart from watching on average three movies per day and going out at night to drown my sorrows, quite literally.

On my last day the weather cleared up a bit and I did go down to the beach, which was a mere five minutes away from our hostel, for a long walk and watched the surfers do their thing.

The next day I was back on the bus, leaving Mount Maunganui and reaching Auckland around lunch time. As I had no intention of jumping off the sky tower I just went out and explored the area in and around Queen Street and the harbour.

I have to say that the only hostel that left a bad after taste in my mouth in New Zealand was the Fat Camel in Auckland.

I had opted for a four bed dorm, which was going to cost me NZ$30 (£11) and I discovered with horror that the room did not have a window.

Or any other form or air con it seemed. The kitchen area smelt rather bad and at night my former friends from Sydney came to say hello: cockroaches, rather big cockroaches.

Later on that night I was to discover that the walls in our room did not connect and when someone entered the communal kitchen area the light would shine into our dorm - disaster.

My bed was also the creakiest I had come across so far - I only had to twitch my big toe to wake up everyone, including me, with the noise.

At four in the morning people got home from the usual backpacker drinking spots and decided that it was fun to play with the light switch outside and also to throw around cutlery....

I had to get up at the crack of dawn to continue my journey to the Bay of Islands but at four in the morning I did not even have the energy left to go down to reception to complain.

I left at 07:00 and was happy to be out of my sticky, smelly, windowless dorm disaster - thoroughly crossing this particular hostel off my list of recommendations.

From Auckland it didn't take long at all to reach the Bay of Islands, which is famous for it's treaty grounds and the historical aspect of these surroundings.

Plus it is again one of the most beautiful regions I have come across on my whole trip.

Activities in the Bay of Islands included: more swimming with dolphins, a shotover boat trip to the famous hole in the rock, sandboarding and visiting the most northern tip of New Zealand (Cape Reinga).

You can also drive along 90 Mile beach, past the abovementioned hole in the rock.

Fishing trips and hiking are also available - almost too many things to do in a too short period of time…