It was warm and sunny the next day which made us wish that it had been like this in the other region for the Tongariro Crossing. We walked around Napier and saw all the art deco buildings which were pretty. It was a very unique cute town and we just wanted to dress up in 1920s clothing.

We also visited the aquarium since they claimed to have live kiwis and I wanted to see a live kiwi before leaving New Zealand. It was a small aquarium but it had some nice displays especially the seahorses. They also had an underwater walkway where fish swim all around and even above you and through this are there was a travelator. Even though the section wasn’t well maintained I thought the travelator was awesome.

A Kiwi

Then we decided to go on a small wine yard tour but only made it to one winery, the Mission Estate. It was beautiful and the wine was nice too, but I only tried one since I was the DD.

Then we went to lunch where we had the great debate of what to do next. We had several options which were drive to Wellington and stay on schedule, or drive back towards Taupo and do the Tongariro Crossing and postpone the ferry. The forecast was a bit bette—that it would rain in the morning and possibly clear up in the afternoon. We debated about buying ponchos and waterproof pants since we would have to start the hike in the morning. We were still skeptical so it was brought up that we could still decide in the morning whether to do the hike or not, to which I said no since it’s a 4+ hour drive back, and therefore, if we went back we would do it, at least I would do it. So unfortunately we decided to skip Tongariro. At least we know what we’ll do if we ever come back to New Zealand.

Mission Estate Winery

We drove to Wellington and stayed at the YHA. When we got out of the car we were totally blown away it was so incredibly windy and cold. We were told it would be windy but it was really incredible.