Hastings, NZ
February 11, 2023 - February 14, 2023
Bridget here! I was so excited to finally get to the Hawke’s Bay area because that meant WINERIES :-D Since Ben had us hiking 13 miles the day prior, I was ready for some delicious vino to celebrate that previous day’s accomplishment. Our drive from Tongariro National Park to the Hawke’s Bay area was about 4 hours. A couple hours in, we passed a town called Taupo, which is home to Lake Taupo - the largest crater lake of the North Island. About 10 minutes north of the lake is a dam on Waikato River called Aratiatia Dam. There are a couple lookout points that you can take a short walk to in order to watch the dam release water. Water is released 3 times a day at 10am, 12pm, and 2pm. We arrive in time to see the 12pm release; however, there was a sign stating that the dam was continuously releasing water due to operational maintenance. Even though we didn’t see the big release, the water was flowing so powerfully that it was still an amazing sight to see!
Hawke’s Bay consists of a bunch of districts including Napier, Hastings, and Clive to name a few. As we drove in to Hawke’s Bay, we stopped at Linden Estate Winery. They had a cellar room on one side of the property where you could do tastings and a restaurant on the other side. We hopped out of the car and headed to the restaurant to take a look at the menu. We decided to go the cheap route for lunch. We went back to our car, made ourselves a ham sandwich, ate it in the front seat, then headed to the cellar room for a tasting. Traveling for as long as we are, you have to pick the cheap route sometimes to make your money last a wee bit longer! Wine tastings in New Zealand seem to be a little different than the US (at least the US wineries I’ve been to). If you do a tasting (on average $20 NZD) and a tasting only, you pay for those tastings. If you do a tasting and end up buying a bottle, the tastings are FREE and you just pay for the bottle. Our plans at these wineries were to buy bottles to stock up for the rest of the trip instead of buying at a liquor store, so it has been a WIN-WIN for us - free tastings and supporting the local wineries! At least that’s what we are telling ourselves to make us feel better about spending money :) Our favorite wine at Linden Estate was the Cab Franc! After Linden Estate Winery, we head up the road about 20 mins to Church Road Winery. We had another tasting here with a nice woman named Mary. We ended up buying 2 bottles of wine here to get our “free” tasting. We then head over to the Hastings area to check in to our Airbnb.
This Airbnb was AMAZING! It was a yurt, which we were a little concerned about because the yurt we stayed at in Hawaii was on the rough/camping side. This yurt, however, was so clean, cozy, and just beautiful. The Airbnb hosts had their house on the property plus the yurt, which was tucked away in the back by trees, gardens, and I think an apple orchard. There were so many apple trees. Ben ended up taking an apple off one of the trees - it was very tart and sour! The yurt had everything we needed - an outdoor kitchen, a bocce court, a cute little tree swing, and an outhouse type bathroom/shower combo. Ben grilled us up some dinner that first night and we enjoyed one of our local bottles of wine.
The next day, we decided to go rent bikes and do our own little bike wine tour. Rain was about to roll in that afternoon (story of our lives so far), so there was a chance we’d get poured on at some point. We got our bikes and headed on the wine path. It was a 50 minute country road bike ride to get to the first of three wineries on that specific trail. The views along this trail were beautiful - we saw a duck eating an eel in the little river along the path, we saw some unique birds, and got to enjoy passing the many farms along the way. The first winery we hit was Te Awanga Estate. We get a glass of wine here with a little charcuterie board to hold us over for lunch. We hop back on our bikes and ride on a gravel road for about .75 miles where we arrive at winery number 2 - Clearview Estate Winery. Here we each do a tasting then hop back on our back for the final winery - Elephant Hill. Elephant Hill was by far my favorite as far as ambiance and the landscape goes. The inside was a little on the boojie side, but still a wonderful place to enjoy some wine. Before heading back to the bike shop, we stop in to a small market to grab food for dinner and for the next day, which happened to be both the Superbowl and when Cyclone Gabrielle was to hit the area. Head over to Spotify to hear our podcast about the details of Cyclone Gabrielle.
Our final day in Hastings was spent in the yurt! Rain was expected all day/night, which was perfect because it was SUPER BOWL MONDAY! The Super Bowl was on for us Monday at 12:30pm - nice change of pace from the usual Sunday night game. Ben set up his laptop and streamed the game. Beforehand, we each put in a couple bets through our brothers. I almost won us $2,500 - it was looking good all the way up to the last couple minutes of the game. The only part of the bet that still needed to hit was the Eagles to win. DANGIT! I am so happy the Chiefs won, but the extra moolah would have been nice :-D
Although Cyclone Gabrielle kept us from exploring more wineries, Hastings and the Hawke’s Bay area was amazing. On to our next stop…
The capital of NZ - WELLINGTON!
