500 days away from home!

We woke up to the most gorgeous sunrise this morning over the sea. It was so incredible to sit in the van with the back doors open eating breakfast while watching the sun turn the sky in to all kinds of colours as it stretched up from behind the horizon. Because we've had to pick up the pace a bit we haven't really been researching what there is to do in each place we stop. With that in mind we headed straight to the i-site this morning to find out what is best to do in Napier in a day. We soon learnt that Napier suffered from a devastating earthquake in the 1930s that destroyed pretty much everything. It also lifted the ground by 2m so the harbour they had no longer was underwater. Despite it being the great depression the town was rebuilt from scratch but with the modern art deco style that was present at the time. Because this style era was during a big depression major developments like this were not happening much elsewhere in the world so Napier is now said to be a snapshot into the 1930s art deco era. We discovered they have a centre here that explains it more so we went and watched a video about the entire history of the town and the earthquake. After getting a full understanding of the history we grabbed a couple of coffees, Nick's being the tiniest take away cup I've ever seen, and walked around the streets admiring the buildings. They now have a trust in place that continually works at keeping the buildings in good condition and freshly painted. Each year as well the whole town goes back in time and has a huge 1930s style street party for the day which sounded pretty fun to attend. We weaved our way around town and eventually ended up back at the van where we decided to head to Hastings down the road for some lunch. We found a nice little cafe and both enjoyed a fried breakfast despite it being lunch time. Our last stop for the day was to Arataki Honey which as the name suggests produces a lot of different types of honey. They had a really good information section about the production of honey and even several different cross sections of working hives on show. We spent quite a while trying to spot Bee-yonce, Bee-trice and DeBee amongst the mass of stripey bodies. We were able to taste all their honeys and Nick enjoyed this section a bit too much I feel! Although we didn't like any enough to buy we enjoyed the whole place very much. Today has also marked 500 days away from home. Can you actually believe we left the UK 500 days ago?! I can't! It's flown by and dragged by all at the same time. We've had such an amazing journey, seen and done things I never imagined, had awesome highs and depressing lows but one thing that I know for certain is that I'm so glad we've experienced it all together. Missing home and family has been and will continue to be the hardest part and we've had days where home sickness takes over. On those days we try to go a do something awesome, splash out on an experience, food or even a powered site for the night so we can have heat! We love New Zealand, this has become our second home, but without the people we love and care for the most in the world it can never be home for us and that's why we will always come back to the UK no matter how beautiful the country is. Here's to the next however many days exploring this incredible world!Read more