Chocolate & Wine

After breakfast at café Ujazi, where Nicola again ran into a colleague from Wellington, we popped into the i-site to find out about gannet tours. The world’s largest mainland gannet colony is found at the picturesquely-named Cape Kidnappers. This is only accessible via authorised guided tours – there is no access for ordinary vehicles. Unfortunately, around the end of March the gannets start to depart for Australia, so we decided that discretion was the better part of valour and we would save this particular adventure for another time…even though the leaflet tells us that it’s “more fun than you ever imagined!”

Instead, (and after checking that it was open) we drove out to the chocolate factory at Silky Oak Chocolates. This has a museum of chocolate, which we dutifully toured, and watched some cringeworthy Cadbury’s TV adverts from the 50s and 60s. We then headed to the shop and bought a selection of chocolates, and went to the café for a cup of extreme chocolate with chilli. This turned out to be more like chocolate sauce than hot chocolate, and was topped with whipped cream and chillis.

Extreme chocolate with chilli

We sat outside as it was a lovely sunny morning, and were watched by some extremely podgy-looking sparrows. Wonder what their diet consists of?

Next on the agenda was to visit some of the Hawke’s Bay wineries to be found in the area. The intention was to get some lunch at one of these, but we were thwarted in this ambition, as it appears to be an incredibly popular pastime to go to a vineyard for lunch on Easter Sunday – who knew? Both the vineyards we tried were fully booked. So we tasted the wines at Te Awanga and Elephant Hill, and bought some wine.

The elephant at Elephant Hill vineyard

We drove to nearby Havelock North, a small town south of Napier, and found ourselves a pub to have a quick lunch in – fish and chips and pasta, nothing too exciting. Afterwards we explored Havelock North on foot, but with very little open, this didn’t take us long.

In the early evening we went to explore the wetlands and estuary area just outside Napier. It was largely deserted, with just the occasional oystercatcher and heron to be seen. We walked around and took some pictures, then came home.