{"id":641,"date":"2007-12-23T03:16:50","date_gmt":"2007-12-23T03:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/archives\/2007\/12\/23\/wellington-to-napier\/"},"modified":"2007-12-23T03:16:50","modified_gmt":"2007-12-23T03:16:50","slug":"wellington-to-napier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/archives\/2007\/12\/23\/wellington-to-napier\/","title":{"rendered":"Wellington to Napier"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Back on the Magic bus, this time with Rangi as the driver, saw some old faces again and got talking to Dave and Jessica, a couple from California.<\/p>\n<p>We had a brief stop at a wildlife sanctuary where I finally got to see a live kiwi.  They&#8217;re much bigger than I expected and I was quite surprised when one started calling and sounded a bit like a seagull.  I couldn&#8217;t get any photos because they were being kept in a darkened room (they&#8217;re nocturnal) and flash photography wasn&#8217;t allowed.<\/p>\n<p>On through the countryside, passing through lots of small towns serving the farms.  I noticed that a lot of them still seem to have their own cinemas, obviously the multiplexes haven&#8217;t yet completely taken over in NZ.<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/media\/NewZealand\/Napier\/TreeCoveredHills_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/NewZealand\/Napier\/TreeCoveredHills_t.jpg\" title=\"Countryside.\" alt=\"Rolling, green, tree-covered hills with a road cutting along the side of one.\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When we arrived in Napier most of us were staying in the same hostel, Archie&#8217;s Bunker.  No idea why it&#8217;s called that, it seems to be just another converted hotel but was comfortable and friendly.  Napier is a pleasant seaside town noted for its Art Deco buildings, which were the result of a <a href=\"http:\/\/library.christchurch.org.nz\/Childrens\/NZDisasters\/Napier.asp\">terrible earthquake<\/a> in 1931.<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/media\/NewZealand\/Napier\/MasonicHotelNapier_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/NewZealand\/Napier\/MasonicHotelNapier_t.jpg\" title=\"Art Deco buildings in Napier.\" alt=\"An Art Deco hotel frontage, cars parked in front.\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"\/media\/NewZealand\/Napier\/NapierStreet1_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/NewZealand\/Napier\/NapierStreet1_t.jpg\" title=\"Art Deco buildings in Napier.\" alt=\"A street of Art Deco buildings.\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Speaking of eathquakes, while we were sitting in the lounge watching a movie the building started shaking.  I assumed it was just a passing train or something, but Dave and Jessica got up and headed for the nearest doorway (Californians are used to these thigns).  Nearby Gisborne had experienced a <a href=\"http:\/\/afp.google.com\/article\/ALeqM5iduLbaKxPzBhiVCiBB8ItjiCgpFA\">earthquake reaching 6.8 on the Richter scale<\/a>.  Although there was quite a bit of damage it seems that there were few injuries and only one related death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back on the Magic bus, this time with Rangi as the driver, saw some old faces again and got talking to Dave and Jessica, a couple from California. We had a brief stop at a wildlife sanctuary where I finally got to see a live kiwi. They&#8217;re much bigger than I expected and I was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,25,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-zealand","category-rtw","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}