2025 New Zealand - September - Day 07 - Having fun in Napier

 September 17, 2025

After having a good nights sleep, we woke up early, looked out the window and saw an amazing sunrise happening over the ocean.  It was quite shocking to see it.  So much that we are going to get up earlier to get a better view of it on the horizon rising over the ocean.

We kinda chilled all morning and wondered if we would get good enough weather to do what we had planned…rent e-bikes and ride all over the Hawke Bay Area.  We also decided to check out what this whole Art Deco thing is about here in Napier.  So we signed up for a guided walk.  That pretty much filled our day out.  So at around 10 AM, off we went on our .6 mile walk to the bike shop.  We did stop at a bakery to get some morning food.  At around 11, we rented our e-bikes for a couple of hours and off we went.

The e-bike thing is so fun and we had a fantastic ride.  Although the sun never peeked through the high clouds, the weather was cool, but warm enough to really enjoy the 29 kilometer ride that we took stopping at various points along the way.  We saw where the airport is and where Hawke Bay used to be.  In our walk we learned that in 1931, a massive earthquake happened causing the ground in this large area to rise 2 meters causing the bay water to drain back into the ocean and stop high tides from splashing into the streets of Napier.  It changed the town.  Now where the bay sits you find agriculture and the airport along with lots of other things.  We circled the majority of the the South Bay which feeds directly out into the sea.  It was a really, really nice ride.  We ended back at the bike shop at 1 PM.  For lunch, we figured that we had earned a gelato (instead of a sandwich).  So we sat down, ate some gelato and video called a couple of our kids to check in on them.  

At 2 pm we began our walking tour of Art Deco in Napier.  I guess Art Deco is something that originated in the 30’s and has carried over into the architecture and celebrations here in Napier.  The buildings are all in pastels mostly and the architecture of various designs.   A number even have a Spanish Mission colonial feel.  It was an interesting walk as he described buildings in the downtown area of Napier that were demolished and rebuilt keeping their original Art Deco designs.  The interesting thing was that after this devastating earthquake, they rebuilt the city in just 2 years.  That was because it was the time of the depression and labor was many and cheap.   And they did some amazing things.  Napier was one of the first towns in the world to put their power and telephone lines underground!  That’s pretty amazing.  And they also widened some of the streets.  Someone really had some forethought on such things.

After our tour, we made the long walk back to our hotel room. It’s safe to say that we arrived pretty darn tired.  But it was a wonderful day seeing a town in the world that we had never heard about before but has a very unique history.  We really wondered what we were going to do today.  And it turned out amazing!

Pictures:

This is a picture of the bakery items behind the glass.  But what is key the Lolly Cake…something native to New Zealand that Denise said we had to try.  It was ok…but I wouldn’t drive far to get it!  😄

So this is a picture of Denise.  But what is key, is the point of land behind her.  We picked up the bikes around on the other side of that point.  So we rode all the way around this bay and then over and around that point.  So fun.

Two riders having some fun!

At one point where a small lighthouse was, they had these large chairs and one was bright yellow.  Naturally Denise had to jump in it and yell, Take my picture!

This is the small lighthouse that I mentioned above.  Very small but at the point of entry to the bay.

One of our pit stops along the way.  We both took advantage of it.  

Along the sea coast you can always find ice plant that was in bloom in various array of colors.  Some of the areas were so pretty.

Lumber is huge business around here.  And here on the port, they had a massive lumber holding area for loading into container ships I believe.  Tons of logs from the areas we saw on our drive over where the land was clear cut.  

All through Napier you find amazing sea wall art.  I think there are over 50 massive wall art all over Napier.  We saw a few on our ride and walk.  Pretty impressive some of them were.

The remaining pictures are of the Art Deco buildings through out the downtown area of Napier.  Some were theaters, stores, banks, hotels, etc..  It was fun to see and hear about the history of these buildings.

I conclude with some scenic or interesting things we saw.  This picture is about the bay and the tree.  These type of trees are everywhere.  I need to find out what kind of tree it is.  But we think they are so cool on how they are shaped.

This morning, while sitting on our balcony, I had a visitor.  He was brave enough to get within three feet of me without me offering any food.  I later game him some chocolate cookie which he took gratefully and off he went…not to ever come back.  I hope I didn’t do to what occurred with the fish yesterday!

This picture might make a wall on our house someday.  It was the sunrise this morning.  Now, I saw it a bit earlier when only half the sun could be seen on the horizon.  I’m going to get that tomorrow morning.  We shall see.

Many times, as we’ve drove around, we’ve seen wood stacked such as this.  We’ve seen it on farms in the mountains, in the valleys and now on the beach.  I just wonder if they come along and burn it.  The fellow we hired the bikes from told us about a cyclone that brought massive amounts of wood and debris flowing into the city and out to the sea.  They still have wood washing up years later and the cleanup still continues.  The cyclone occurred in 2023.