Art Deco Napier and Taupo

We left Wellington on Saturday and headed to Napier. The weather was not particularly nice so apart from pit stops for sandwiches, cake, and coffee, we made only one stop for scenery—a pretty waterfall.

The city of Napier was completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1931, and was subsequently rebuilt almost entirely in Art Deco style. Little in the city centre changed until the 1980’s, and since then conservation efforts have lead to one of the finest sets of Art Deco buildings in the world, which we toured in the pouring rain on Sunday morning. It’s difficult to describe Art Deco—it has this modernistic and forward-looking feel, yet at the same time it has a quaint and old-fashioned charm. No more so is this true than in Napier which is a living and working city, not a museum or ghost town.

Sunday afternoon we headed to Taupo where we hoped to do a day tramp in the Tongiro national park (used as the location of Mordor and Mount Doom), throw ourselves out of planes and go jet boating. Unfortunately the weather gods were against us and we were forced to find other ways to entertain ourselves—a highly frustrating and depressing task. Yes, there were impressive waterfalls and rapids, a smelly geothermal activity area with steaming ‘fumaroles’ and boiling mud (evocatively named ‘craters of the moon’), and a pretty good museum, but it wasn’t what we had come here to do… 🙁