I'm back home.

YAY!

The holiday was fantastic, but damn, it's good to be home.

Ok, yesterday we travelled from Taupo to Napier in Hawkes Bay. Before we left Taupo we went to a place called Huka Falls, where we saw an amazing display of the power of water. A river was channelled through a narrow rock passage, and the force of the flow was thus increased. Imagine the flow of water down a 100-foot wide river suddenly channelled into a 20-foot wide rock channel. Suddenly the peaceful river becomes a force of destruction as it rushes through the channel before exiting the other end into a larger area again. However, the force of the water has cut out a hole in the ground and so the exit has become like a waterfall, but not one you want to stand under. :blink:

I'm going to put up a video (soon) that I took of it with my digital camera, but it's about 4 Mb. Download times will be:

56k modem - 25 mins
128k ADSL - 5 mins
Broadband - much faster

So we drove to Napier, and went around a few wineries so that Mel could do some wine tasting. After that we went back to the backpackers and then went for a walk to a pool and spa bath place, where we had a nice relaxing spa. Ah, that was the life....

Then we wandered around town for a bit to find somewhere to eat. Then it was bedtime. I was knackered. I think 10 days of driving were catching up with me. So instead of waking up at 7:30am, as usual for the past 10 days, we slept in until 8:30. Woohoo! Hehehe. I think it made the world of difference though, 'cause I wasn't so knackered today.

We did some more wine tasting before heading back to Wellington.

Hawkes Bay was a really nice place, and being only 4 hours from Wellington, I can potentially see some future weekend visits to stay there and see more of what it has to offer.

So now I'm back home in Wellington. Over the next few days I'm going to add more information to each of my 'daily entries', to give more details about the holiday and what I experienced, felt, saw, etc.

It's good to be back.