Advertisement
Published: March 24th 2012
Edit Blog Post
Fishing
See how clear the water is! Today I got the full Kiwi experience! I woke up and got dressed. I wore all black today to represent the all blacks, because today I had a Maori tour guide take me on a real day in New Zealand. A man in a business suit and a mokko (a maori chin tattoo) came and picked me up from the hotel around 10:00. We hopped into his car and he told the driver to take us to the jetty.
His name was Maui, after the great New Zealand legend of Maui. Today was sun a nice warm day but there was a ridiculous strong breeze. To get to the jetty we had to go past the country side. There were more sheep and more cattle. There were even some goats. Trees stretched so high, maybe even above the clouds and some roads were dirt. After about an hour and a half of driving we finally arrived at the jetty. Maui thanked the driver and we headed to the boat that would take us fishing. What better way to spend a trip to New Zealand than to go fishing, after all New Zealand is known for it's sea food and is
Hangi
This was our fabulous hangi dinner! called the land of plenty!
Maui helped me onto the boat and introduced me to some other people on it. There was Paul, who was the driver of the boat, Kahu who was Maui's sister and Pikea, Maui's older brother. They were all excellent fishers and all had some kind of mokko. Kahu was really nice and helped me with my fishing rod. The ocean was a clear blue, but the further we went out, the darker the water got.
We spent a while out there, and it was nice getting to know the people on the boat. After a while they started singing in maori, it respect their god and just to pass the time. Their harmonizing was so beautiful. They offered to take me back to their place where they were having a hungi. A hangi is kinda of like a barbeque but its cooked underground on hot rocks. They dig a hole in the ground, put the rocks in the hole and place your food on top then cover it with dirt.
It wasn't very exciting fishing, except for the odd snapper or 2 we caught, I personally didn't catch any but Pikea did. For lunch they treated me to some kumera ( sweet potato) and some kind of beef, it was tasty! They had prepacked it so I didn't have to worry about finding somewhere to eat.
By 4:30 we decieded to call it quits and head back to their place for the hangi. I didn't really know what to do while the boys were digging the hole for the food so I helped Kahu prepare the food, we were going to have chicken with potatos and carrots. Kahu and I deboned the chicken and peeled and chopped the carrots while the boys dug a hole 4 feet into the ground. They lit a fire to heat the iron, the iron would be used as hot rocks for the food, once they had put the iron in they covered the iron with cabbage leaves, then the boys covered the sides of the hole with blankets so no dirt would fall into our food, then they lowered in a tray of chicken, then the vegetables. They then covered the vegetables with more wet blankets to trap the steam that had erupted and then covered the wet blankets with canvas and then finally some dirt on top. The hangi would take roughly 3 and a half hours to cook so by the time it had finished it was 7:30. In the meantime we sat around their coffee table and talked about our lives while the sun went down.
When dinner was cooked and we took the food out the hole in the ground, the smell was absolutely incredible! Everyone grabbed a plate and helped themselves. I'm glad to say I now have gained some maori friends here in New Zealand. They thought it was funny when I tried to pronounce some of the words they said in maori.
By 9:30, the hotel cab had come to pick me up and I started to make my way back home. I was awfully tired and thought tomorrow i'd just have a stay at home day.
Today was really fun and i'm really greatfull for the experiences i'm having here. By 10:30 I was in bed and it was lights out for me.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.078s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 6; qc: 43; dbt: 0.0475s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb