Palmy

I decided that I prefer hostels when they have more people in them. Last night it felt a bit creepy and quiet. This made me want to get out of the place quickly so after some toast we packed up and headed out to bluff hill lookout. We may have cheated by driving up in the car but it saved us some time. The views at the top were quite nice, looking out to sea and in the far distance were some hills and mountains but nothing will beat the views from the other day. We took a few pictures and moved on, heading out of Napier and getting on the road towards Wellington. We wanted to stop at a winery because Hawke's Bay (the area where Napier is) is famous for its wines. We drove up to Mission Estate, the oldest winery in New Zealand, which some of you may have heard of, driving up their beautiful long drive and round to the restaurant building to park. However, we weren't the smartest dressed and it all looked far too posh for us. We decided we'd feel like fools if we strolled in there and wanted to save the wine tours for Marlborough anyway. Instead we turned around and drove back out. 

We took a little detour on the road to Wellington to see what Hastings looked like. It was similar to Napier but I'd say it seemed a little busier! Maybe we should have stayed there. Through Hastings we drove towards a hill lookout, stopping at a place called Strawberry Patch for a real fruit ice cream beforehand. However, the berry frozen yoghurts sounded nicer so we got one of them each while sitting outside in the sunshine, looking out over the strawberry fields. 

We eventually made it up to Te Mata hill lookout which was rather lovely. The views spread out past Napier and over the flatland to hills beyond. It was nice but I prefer the mountains. Flat land isn't as exciting. We attempted to eat some sandwiches up there but it was pretty windy so we had to hold onto our bread tightly (one of my pieces blew away). 

Back on the road we decided to keep going as far as we could. Wellington was a long way away though so in the end we decided to stop part the way for the night. This meant stopping at Palmerston North (called Palmy by the locals) because it was a large university town so would have somewhere cheapish to stay. However, I'd read that some time ago John Cleese had dissed the place saying something like it was worse than death. We were only staying a night so hopefully it wouldn't be that bad. The locals named a rubbish dump after John Cleese though so at least the people might be entertaining. 

We parked at the i-site in the centre of town when we got there so we could scout out hostels on foot. We found a nice one with a few more people than last night so booked a couple of beds before heading back to the car and then to a supermarket to get tea for tonight. We chose to cook a curry but played it safe with a butter chicken sauce. If we had the money and the supplies we would make it from scratch but the sauce we went for looked quite posh (it was on special offer). As both of us were feeling lazy we decided to put the chicken and onion and green beans on a tray and bake them in the oven, adding the sauce for the last five minutes. This actually made the chicken (thighs rather than breasts) super tasty and succulent. The sauce was delicious and mixed with the rice we had a decent meal. It was probably the tastiest meal I've had in a while. 

We spent the evening writing blogs and planning what to do in Wellington, our final stop in the north.