After leaving Toyah and Greg's, I drove straight to Napier to pick up Noemie at Archie's Bunker Backpackers. Napier is a really interesting town. It was a destroyed in an earthquake in the 1930s, and was rebuilt almost completely in the style of the time: Art Deco! It's not very large, but the building certainly make up for that. I'm really excited to explore it in the next week! Noemie and I have plans for an Art Deco walk, and a day at the museum, and some shopping. :)
After I picked her up, we couldn't stop talking and so we had a hard time finding Beagle's place. After a bit of driving around, and some bad directions from our GPS, we completely the 5k drive in about a half an hour. :) What a pleasure it is to be with Noemie again! We always have SO much to say to each other, and her point of view is always so fresh and intelligent and interesting and helpful. And her English is so good!! It seems like she's had some incredible wwoofing experiences in the past five months, and so I can't wait to catch up with her about everything.
Beagle is the owner of Beagle's Bees, an organic and raw honey business! All of his honey is completely raw with no additives. He heats it for the grocery store, but he sells it unheated to his farmers market customers. Unheated honey is still “alive” and doesn't degrade-- they've been able to eat 3000 year old honey that was found in an Egyptian tomb, I believe! It's crazy good for you. He gave us a honey tasting of “commercial” honey with sugar and water added, his heated honey, and his unheated honey. The difference is actually astounding.