Some cities are built. Hawke's Bay was rebuilt. At 10:47 on the morning of 3 February 1931, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the region's twin cities of Napier and Hastings, killing 256 people and levelling the central business districts. The demolition rubble was dumped along the foreshore and turned into parks. Then the architects arrived, and what rose from the wreckage was something no one had planned: the most consistently Art Deco cityscape in the world. Today, Napier alone has over 100 Art Deco buildings in its CBD, most of them restored and heritage-listed, and the annual Art Deco Festival draws visitors who come to walk streets that look like a 1930s film set made real.
Hawke's Bay sits on the North Island's east coast, where the Heretaunga Plains stretch flat and fertile between the hills and the sea. The warm, dry, sunny climate made this sheep country first, then beef and dairy, then orchards, and finally vineyards. Today the region is one of New Zealand's premier wine-growing areas, with the oldest winemaking history in the country. Syrah, Merlot, Chardonnay, and Sauvignon Blanc thrive in soil warmed by long summers. The Esk Valley, just north of Napier, is home to some of the region's oldest wineries, a lavender farm, and a restored colonial farmhouse that now operates as a lodge. The landscape has a Mediterranean quality that sets it apart from the green, rain-washed image most people carry of New Zealand.
The 1931 earthquake did not just destroy buildings. It rearranged the geography. The quake raised the land by several metres, draining the Ahuriri Lagoon entirely. The airport, surrounding farmland, and the modern suburbs of Onekawa, Pandora, Pirimai, and Tamatea all sit on what was once underwater. Some streets still carry their old coastal names: roads called a quay or a bay now run through neighborhoods well inland. The rebuilding happened fast, in the prevailing architectural style of the day, and the result was a city that looks as though it were designed as a unified whole. Zigzag motifs, sunburst patterns, and geometric facades line Emerson Street and Dickens Street, the main shopping arteries of a downtown that functions as an open-air museum of interwar design.
Beyond the cities, the landscape offers dramatic contrasts. Cape Kidnappers, south of Hastings, hosts one of the world's largest mainland gannet colonies. Thousands of Australasian gannets nest on rocky headlands accessible by foot along the shore at low tide, and the panoramic views back across Hawke Bay are worth the walk even without the birds. Inland, Te Mata Peak rises above the plains near Havelock North, offering views that sweep from the coast to the ranges. The drive to the summit is short but steep, and on clear days the vista extends to the snow-capped volcanic peaks of the central North Island. Between the coast and the hills, the Hawke's Bay wine trail loops through dozens of cellar doors where visitors taste local vintages alongside platters of the region's cheeses.
Hawke's Bay was one of New Zealand's original colonial provinces, established when British settlers arrived in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. The original province stretched from the 39th parallel, north of Napier, to the Manawatu River south of Woodville. This history survives in Hawke's Bay Show Day, a regional public holiday held on the Friday before Labour Day each October. The road in from the west, the old Taihape route over the Kaweka Ranges, includes a stretch once so steep that a storekeeper at the bottom kept a team of draught horses to haul wagons over a section ironically named the Gentle Annie. The road is sealed now, but the name survives as a reminder that reaching Hawke's Bay was once an adventure in itself.
Located at 39.42S, 176.82E on the North Island's east coast. Hawke Bay is a large, sweeping bay easily identified from altitude. The twin cities of Napier and Hastings sit on the Heretaunga Plains at the bay's southern end. Hawke's Bay Airport (NZNH) is on the northwest outskirts of Napier, with daily flights from Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch. Cape Kidnappers is visible to the south as a prominent headland. At 5,000-8,000 ft, the entire bay, plains, and surrounding ranges form a dramatic panorama. The contrast between the flat, cultivated plains and the rugged hills behind them is striking from the air.