Wine country

The area around Napier is beautiful and very pastoral, the wine district is home to vineyards and orchards very similar to the Okanagan Valley. Interspersed with the grapes and apples, apricots and plums are sheep and cattle farms with their terraced hill sides and sloping hay fields. It is a pleasure to be a passenger in the van as I have so much to look at wherever we go.

After Iain and I left Eketahuna we spent one night in a free camp site on the banks of a small river in the heart of the wine region. We parked the van on a gravel bar across from cattle pastures and a kilometer or so away from the nearest grape vines. We literally giggled to ourselves as we pulled out the camp chairs and settled in to watch the sun set - how could a place this beautiful be free?

About an hour after we arrived we watched storm clouds begin to build on the horizon. The heat and humidity of the day had made the air thick and still, but slowly small breezes had started to ruffle the water of the river and cool us off in the shade of the van. We were betting each other whether the storm would hit us or curve around the hills and follow the river away from us. It was a close thing, we got some stray rain drops and multiple rainbows but the thunder was the only part of the storm that reached us.

We enjoyed a beautiful scarlet and purple sunset with our dinner and listened to the sound of the river and crickets as we fell asleep that night.