Paekakariki The sandy beach and rural surroundings close to Wellington on Queen Elizabeth Park at Paekakariki were an ideal training ground for American troops preparing for combat in the Pacific during World War II. Now this 650-hectare park is a popular recreation area for escapees from Wellington. Part of it is the last remnant of natural dunes on Kapiti’s coastline, which once stretched from Paekakariki to Foxton.
There are three excellent walking tracks: a one-hour walk with good views over the dunes from a replanted wetland; a three-hour return coastal track on a gently graded walk following the coast; and an in-land track almost parallel to the coast track but with more shelter and vegetation. An alternative is to hire a horse from Mackays Crossing. Also near the crossing is the Wellington Tramway Museum with a working tram that travels from there to Whareroa Beach and back.
Paraparaumu The small Pip’s Village Café on Rosetta Road, Raumati Beach, has homely, hearty food in a sunny relaxed atmosphere. I can also recommend the coffee. The food is café style and locals tell me that one of the best-kept secrets of Raumati is Pip’s pies, which are baked on the premises.
The Lindale Centre, a kilometre north of the town, is a complex of shops that includes a tasting room for Kapiti Cheeses, a Saturday farmers’ market, the Olive Shop, Kapiti Candies, a honey shop, a woodturning school and several restaurants.
Southward Museum is on Otaihanga Road, SH1, Paraparaumu. Len Southward began collecting cars in 1956 with the purchase of a Model T Ford. Later his name became synonymous in Australasia with speed boat racing. He drove to victory many times in the speedboat, Red Head, and was the first man in the region to travel at 100mph on water. But it was his fascination with vintage cars that claimed more and more of his time.
Now his amazing museum displays one of the largest and most comprehensive privately-owned collections of veteran and vintage cars in the southern hemisphere. There are around 250 in the collection and half are on show at any one time. Among the vast array, look for Marlene Dietrich’s Rolls Royce, a Chicago gangster’s armour-plated limo, the 1955 Mercedes Gold Wing, a 1938 Bugatti and a 1915 Stutz.
Thirty five years ago Karel Nysse brought chocolate letters back to his home in Featherston from visiting his native Holland. They became the catalyst for the Nyco Chocolate Factory. He gave the chocolates to his wife Lenora and the couple started copying them – for presents to start with and then commercially. This led them to produce more and more varieties of chocolate and to a thriving business, which in 1992, they moved to the Kapiti Coast. There are so many types of chocolate now on sale that Lenora has lost count. But she does know that almost everything they sell is made in the factory behind the shop. If you leave without buying something you have a will of iron.
Prenzel’s success story started in a small shed in Marlborough making schnapps from the abundance of fruit that grows there. Now Prenzel products, not only have several outlets in New Zealand, but are exported all over the world – to Seattle and Wisconsin in the USA, Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong.
On the Kapiti Coast the Prenzel retail outlet is in Paraparaumu on the corner of SH1 and Raumati Road. The range of products is astonishing. I counted nine schnapps, seven liqueurs, two mixers, seven fruit brandies, an award winning gin, eight infused oils and four vinegars. Adding to the chocolates from Nyco, I bought a bottle of butter-flavoured rice-bran oil and a bottle of sour apple schnapps. Waikanae Turn off SH1 into Ngatiawa Road at Waikanae and drive through attractive farmland to find The Potters Kiln Café, a restaurant in an old farmhouse built for a road works foreman in 1911. Wilf and Jan Wright bought the house in the seventies when their business was making household pottery. The enterprise flourished but when the fashion in pottery changed, they decided to turn the house into a restaurant to augment their income.
And now it is a delightful place, the original rooms are full of the couple’s original pottery and fascinating bits and pieces, which they have collected over the years. Genuine homemade soups, salads and meat dishes were served at small tables brightened with flowers and candles. A large tortoiseshell called St John befriended us and so did the pleasant owners. The food was wholesome and delicious.
The couple also welcomes picnickers and in an area attached to the house is a kind of quasi zoo – a menagerie comprising of chickens, a kunikuni pig, a deer, a lama, a Thar mountains goat and various exotic birds.
It’s not often that I actively encourage people to go somewhere but Nga Manu Nature Reserve, 281 Ngarara Road, Waikanae, is a wonderful and heart-warming enterprise. You will love this place. The 35-hectares of coastal lowland swamp are the last large remnant of the terrain that once predominated on the Kapiti Coast.
Now staff and volunteers give it all the attention it deserves. They nurture the unique flora and rid it of predators. They build and maintain the boardwalks and paths that wind through groves and grottos of native trees and plants (including silver fern). Stands of majestic kahikatea trees dominate.
Nga Manu’s purpose is to inform visitors about this special environment and the plants and bird life that live there. Voluntary involvement in recovery programmes, conservation and preservation is encouraged. In the dive tank you will see what happens when water birds dive under the water. In a collection of walk-through cages you might have intimate glimpses of kiwi, tuatara, kea and kaka. It was a wonderful experience to have a kaka land on my shoulder and caress my lips with its beak. This was not a display of affection but an act of claiming territory.
The Waikanae Estuary is also home to 64 different species of bird (not all at one time). A local enthusiast, Mik Peryer, takes people on a one-hour tour in a vintage car and most times can almost guarantee that he can show his guests at least 20 species.
The tour is across farmland and out to a sand spit past two lagoons. Some of the avifauna includes Caspian terns, royal spoonbills, pied shags and swans. Mik is a great raconteur and has been watching the wildlife near his home for many years.
Te Horo The building of the Red House Café on SH1 at Te Horo has been something of a beacon. It was the old general store for nearly 100 years but has recently been renovated and taken on a new purpose for local chef and owner Wendy Reid.
It is easily recognisable because it is very red – inside and out. But Wendy has also kept the ambience of the old building by keeping the original counter, old walnut and oak tables, wooden floors and memorabilia of the building’s long history.
A cottage garden off the deck is an attractive sitting area during the summer and in winter, a comforting open fire warms the interior. Wendy serves hearty all-day breakfasts and a selection of old fashioned favourites such as buttermilk pancakes, black pudding, kippers, and lambs fry and bacon.
Otaki In The Chilli Patch at Penray Gardens, Main South Road, Otaki, has a colourful and wide range of preserves and pickles, relishes, chutneys, sauces and jams for sale. These are all created by Jan Bertlesen and her mother from traditional recipes and ones they have developed themselves. All the cooking is carried out in a commercial kitchen at the back of the shop. Most produce used in the recipes are home grown and spray free. Additive and preservatives are not used. Not every thing has chilli in it, although chilli sauce is a favourite.
In
Otaki is Te Wananga-o-Raukawa, a teaching centre and gallery with a focus on Maori art and design. The gallery exhibits student, tutor and guests’ art work.
If you are looking for clothing. Otaki has a large range of factory outlet shops, which make the town’s main street a lively place at weekends. They include shops such as Pumpkin Patch, Norsewear, Kathmandu and Kumfs.
Levin Waitarere Beach north of Levin is the coast’s most popular swimming beach. Do the coast walk one kilometre south along the beach to find the rusting prow and ribs of the Hydrabad. It takes a lot of imagination to reconstruct her into a three-masted sailing ship, nearly 70 metres long. At the time of her wreck in a gale, she’d been sailing from Lyttelton to Adelaide with a full cargo of rolling stock on board.
The Parrot Ranch in Kimberley Road, Levin, is a professional bird-rearing facility where parrots from all over the world first see the light of day. Jody Burgess and his partner Shelly own and run the two-acre park where a staggering 400 exotic and native parrots live in 150 aviaries.
Jody must be one of the most experienced bird breeders in the country. He has hand-reared 35 species. Twenty gaudy South American macaws announced themselves with shrieking cries. Tagging along was an assortment of other creatures such as monkeys, Palma wallabies, reptiles and fish. He has a zoo licence, a DoC permit and a rehab permit for rescuing injured animals. When I visited, two car-damaged harriers were recovering in a specially constructed cage.
Jody is also a certified reptile breeder and in a specially constructed area 15 New Zealand and four exotic species of reptile were busy shoring up their numbers. A number of parrots in the “nursery” were being what he called ‘re-homed’ – birds that have proved too difficult for their owners to manage and were being brought back to health.
Jody runs tours and is particularly keen to teach children how to appreciate and respect the creatures he tends.
Foxton Beach and Foxton Foxton’s famous windmill, De Molen, inspired perhaps by the flat irrigated land reminiscent of Holland, can’t claim antiquity for it was built in the town’s centre in 2002. None-the-less this five-storey replica of a traditional, 17th Century Dutch windmill is fully operational. The mill is equipped with the latest composite millstones, and the millers produce a range of products using New Zealand grown whole grains – maize, cornmeal, rye meal, kibbled rye and buckwheat flours.
Local volunteers run the De Molen Trust. On the ground floor is a retail shop that stocks Dutch cakes, biscuits and souvenirs and other items from Holland. An in-house video system displays the internal working of the mill and for a small fee you can take a tour to see the hoisting gear, spurwheels, wallowers, millstones chutes, regulators and axles which go to make up traditional, flour grinding equipment.
On the Manawatu riverbank in Foxton there was once a number of flax mills. The only sign of them these days is the Flax Stripper Museum, in town near the windmill. You will not always find it open but a tour will show you a working machine, a photographic display and a 1940s newsreel. The flax stripped here is sold to people who need the fibre for furniture and Maori crafts.
Every Easter local artists are invited to paint murals on specially constructed boards and some of the town’s walls. These remain for the following year and make an interesting outdoor display of local talent. If you are in town at the weekend you could catch a glimpse of them while riding in Foxton’s horse-drawn tram. General information The Horowhenua Wetlands were once scattered through the dunes and forests of the area to form a landscape that is not found anywhere else in New Zealand. Drainage for farming means that only ten percent of these remain. These are treasured, and private landowners are encouraged to fence these off from grazing animals and plant up the edges with appropriate grasses and trees. Many of these wetlands can be visited. A comprehensive brochure from any information office in the area will guide you to thirteen of them.
Many artists make the Nature Coast their home. Among them is Mirek Smisek, OBE, who is a world-acclaimed potter and created 700 pieces for Lord of the Rings and the prominent Kapiti artists Stewart MacKay, George Thompson, Sonia Savage and Alan Wehipeihana. Pick up the Kapiti Coast Arts Guide for more information.
From Motorhomes, Caravans and Destinations (
www.motorhomesandcaravans.co.nz)
Author: Jill Malcolm
New Zealand - RV / Motorhome / Campervan Exchange International Travel Destination.
