Hot Place

Saturday, Jan 6th 2007

Both of us enjoyed a full night’s sleep of eight solid hours for the first time – perhaps it’s the Gisborne sea air so close by, who knows?

So fully refreshed we’re up early and away by 09:20am to look for an internet café. We quickly find one in the West Park shopping area of the City, just along the road from the Motel; but on Saturdays, it doesn’t open until 10:00am.

This allows us enough time to grab another Al Fresco ‘decent grub’ cooked brekky ...

… at the fashionable ‘Verve’ Café & Bar, where we soon get the guitar and croon from inappropriately nicked-named, ‘Dan the Acoustic Assassin’ – who makes good music ...

… all finished off with a fleat-woite coffee; this time with a heart shape sculptured into the creamy froth. How ‘chic’ is that?!

Afterwards we access the Net and have another quick Skype chat with the folks back home, followed by another with John J, who nearly had me thrown out of the joint, as he got me laughing so much with his sharp wit.

After re-fuelling, by 12:30pm we’re back on the road, heading south on SH2 for the 210 kilometres (130 miles) journey to the City of Napier in the southwest corner of Hawkes Bay, the Art Deco capital of the world.

If Napier is anything like Gisborne, then it’ll be a great stopover.

Gisborne is a hot place, in a laid back kinda way. It’s got, on the whole, most of what we would want in life. It’s a thriving settlement that flourishes in the sun, with a good sandy surfing beach that comes with ‘eye candy’; super bars and cafés with great busking going on along a lot of streets. It’s almost like a mini Barcelona – my favourite city in the whole wide world.

The ride down to Napier was jeeust a little too hot for absolute perfect comfort, until around 4:00pm when the ambient temperature started to drop from what felt like a high of around 30ºC (86 ºF).

The scenery along this stretch of SH2 is good too, although not in a sensational way. The surroundings reminded me very much of any classic ride through central France on typical French ‘N’ or maybe ‘D’ type category roads …





I think we’re gonna like this country, or to be more precise, this particular geographical region thereof! .. :o)

Later along the journey – around 30 km (19 miles) outside of Napier – we stop under the shade of a tree alongside the southern shore of this tranquil lake to finish off the cold drinks that we bought at the filling station back in Gisborne.

A family of fine black swans, complete with six fledgling signets, pays us a visit.

But by 4:45pm we’re riding down Napier’s main beach lined tourist drag called ‘Marine Parade’ looking for another motel for the night; most are displaying “No Vacancy” signs.

But towards the end of our search, resigning ourselves to a more distant (but for this reason, cheaper :o) location on the outskirts of town, we suddenly spot this place, displaying “Vacancy” that apparently has all we need: a swimming pool; in-house high speed internet access; its own in-unit cooking facilities, which means we can counter-save on the additional expense (because of the popular area) of a restaurant bill.

Ellen soon secures the deal; we manage to obtain the very last available unit in the whole establishment. As she returns to me with the good news the “Vacancy” advert is turned off …

… AND another bonus – the Trannie will also be under cover tonight!

Phew, wotta scorcher it’s been today!

It’s finally time to cool off, poolside with a beer or two, from the heat of another excellent cloudless mid-summer’s day.