Woke a bit earlier today (6:15) and had a quick breakfast as we wanted to see a few sights of Taupo, our schedule is so very tight that we aren't seeing as much as we would like of the North Island.

We went to Huka falls, this is a man made feature that channels a large river into a narrow channel for hydro electric purposes and my it thunders through, there are several viewing spots and it's worth the visit.

Then on to "The craters of the moon" this is a natural feature where geothermal steam issues from the ground and has made several large craters, which erupt chucking pumice and mud all over the place. Fortunately the eruptions are seldom (10+years) so we missed that activity.

Then the long drive into Napier, although this is only 147 k's on some very good road it is very steep in places and can be slow in a large vehicle. We bumped into some people at one of the stops (Lorraine & Bonner Martin) and they invited us into their palatial camper for a coffee. They are a retired couple who both have many tales to tell, our half an hour with them went very quickly.

We drove the last part of the trip into Napier wondering if we would have enough fuel as in contrast to the rest of NZ there were no fuel stops between the two towns, but we made it with a few k's to spare.

We found the camp site (Kennedy park top 10) without getting too lost or having too many arguments and decided to walk the 3 k's into Napier to view the Art town.

Napier is an Art deco "themed" town this came about because the Town was hit by a huge earthquake in 1931 which flattened the place and meant that it had to be almost entirely rebuilt, The Art deco style was in at the time and that's the style in which the town was built. The buildings are mostly in a good state of repair and we followed a tourist guide book $4 to see as many as we could. All very reminiscent of the Odeon cinemas in the UK but worth the look.

The art deco weekend is this weekend and although we will miss it there were people around getting fitted in 1920-30's costumes and people driving cars around town from the era, several of them are staying at our camp site.

Then the long trek back to the camp site with very tired feet and then a restaurant meal at the camp site and very good value it was too.