Advertisement
Published: November 17th 2022
Edit Blog Post
We’ve packed a whole lotta excitement into today. Just down the street from our hotel is Te Puia and NZ Maori Arts & Crafts Institute. Te Puia is a geothermal wonderland featuring dramatic geysers, bubbling mud pools, traditional arts and culture of Maori people, and a kiwi conservation program. I was able to see a kiwi in its (indoor) natural habitat which I never would have been able to do if it wasn’t in this conservation program. They are breeding and releasing into the wild trying to reestablish kiwis. Kiwis lay huge eggs which the female holds until it is almost ready to hatch before she lays it. Unlike other birds, the babies are born with feathers and their eyes open.
From the kiwi building we proceeded out to the geothermal area. This is like something you can’t even imagine - boiling mud pools plop little gobs of mud into the air along with steam; then the geysers and the steam flowing from a waterfall. There is a place where you can sit on the hot rocks and warm your behind. I had a strange feeling that we little humans were walking on top of a thin crust of volatile
volcanic layers that might just decide to blow us into outer space at any time. After the geothermal experience, the tour went on to the Maori Arts & Crafts Institiute where Māoris learn their traditional skills of wood carving and weaving of NZ flax.
Our guide is the grandson of one of the original wood carvers who helped build the Meeting House.
Next to Waimangu Volcanic Valley. An ecology focused adventure of the craters of this beautiful valley. As you walk through the youngest eco-systems in the world you view a range of geothermal activity, native plants and bird life. Echo Crater and Frying Pan Lake is very acidic and appears to be boiling because of carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide gas bubbling up. It is the world’s largest hot water spring. The bubbling just a few feet from our path was where there was an eruption in 1973. Hot Springs of Mother Earth is a cluster of vigorously boiling hot springs. Mysterious and dramatic Inferno Crater Lake looks like a beautiful vibrant blue lake but in fact regularly overflows with boiling acidic water.
Tonight we go to Tamaki Village for a traditional Hangi (feast) and Maori
Concert, experiencing the warmth of the Maori people during an evening of ceremonial rituals, powerful cultural performances, storytelling and Hangi feasting.
This is a pre-european Maori village. On arrival we are treated to a serious and fierce welcome ceremony, then offered traditional appetizers as we enter an area where we are ”educated”. First is a game using Maori sticks that we participate in and then a lesson on natural plant medicines. The men are trained in warrior tactics, then the women are shown how to twirl “poi” (soft balls on twine). Enter an ancestral meeting house to relax as the family entertain us with powerful cultural performed by young men and women demonstrating fierce, frightening warrior tactics in their songs and dances. The evening is finished by dining on a traditional Hangi buffet cooked the Maori way in an earth oven.
I apologize because my pictures are all mixed up - you’ll have to figure out what is what unfortunately. No pictures of kiwis as we were not allowed lights of any kind inside the kiwi enclosure.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.106s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 7; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0815s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb