Just pottering around Hastings

After a heavy downpour during the night, the day dawned fine, but the grass was rather wet underfoot.  Staying in Hastings, we have been experiencing quite muggy weather, hot and sticky, rather like being somewhere exotic overseas, but without the air travel.

Damp start to the morning

First order of the day was to replenish the honey supplies.  So we took a drive to Arataki Honey in Havelock North to get a couple of empty containers filled.

Arataki Honey Centre, Havelock North

Robin is the honey eater in our household, and has a real love for manuka honey.  Unfortunately, it is the premium of honey here in New Zealand, and about twice the price of the other varieties.  He decided to get one pot refilled with manuka honey, and one filled with rewarewa honey.  And we also purchased a slab of comb honey – that’s really delicious too, and I’ll make sure I get my share of that.

Beautiful manuka honey flowing into the pot

Who’s  happy honey eater, then?

After lunch we called around to see my sister Kathleen and her husband Dennis, and we all carried on to another Hastings icon, Rush Munroe’s Ice-cream Garden.  Just look at that crowd, we weren’t the only ones with ice-cream on our minds.  Englishmen Frederick Rush Munro arrived in New Zealand in 1926 and set up shop with his wife Catherine, making ice-cream to his own recipes.  The shop was destroyed in the devastating 1931 earthquake, and they moved to the current site.  The new premises evolved into the very popular Ice Cream Gardens of today.

All queuing up for an ice-cream

We had to eat our ice-creams quickly before they melted in the heat.

Jenny, Dennis, and Kathleen

We had our first BBQ of the trip back in camp in the evening, followed by new season’s strawberries and cream.  Yummy, the strawberries were so sweet and tasty, how decadent that felt.  The manager’s cat decided to pay us a visit, and hopped up onto the spare tyre.  She was concentrating hard on something over that-away, probably birds going about their business.

This is our last full day in Hastings, and it has been lovely to catch up with my sister and her family.  Tomorrow we will be homeward bound.