Steve’s Travel Blog

Hello all,

 Well my adventure continues and the last week has been very interesting.  Once I got on the road again the soar throat cleared up and I have been feeling great.  My last day in Gisbourne was spent fishing for supper (and I had plenty to eat) and one last day of relaxing.  I left Gissy and the bus dropped me off at a place called Whakatana.  Now I am going to given a pronounciation (spelling does not count) lesson (just for Jacqueline) on NZ language.  The “wh” in NZ is pronounced as a “f” so Whakatane is pronounce like facatane.  The “wh” is used in a lot of words here and so it sounds like the  are swearing a lot and using fuck (sorry mom).  It is their language but I giggle sometimes.  From Whakatane i took a day trip to White Island, which is an active volcano and you can walk in the crater.  I’ll get back to that, It was a 2 hour boat ride to the island and on the way we saw a pod of Orca whales and followed them for a while.  There were 2 baby whales with the pod and it was pretty cool seeing them up close.  My pics did not turn out great but i got a couple of decent ones.  Once we got to the island we got onto a small raft to get on the island and then toured all over it.  It took about 2 hours to walk arounf the island and we got to go to the middle of the crater.  The volcanos in NZ are different than what you normally see as they are not Lava filled but more with hot steam and water.  When they erupt they shoot out water, steam and rocks.  Most of the water that is flowing around the island is extremely hot and very acidic.  The colors of the rock we amazing and there was steam coming up everywhere.  THey have no idea when it will erupt again, the last time was about 10 years ago and they had about 1 minute and 30 seconds of warning.  Not enough time to get off the island so if it happened any one there would probably die.  It is funny (well maybe not funny) but they give you a gas mask and hard hat while you are on the island (like that is going to save you).  We did not see any marine life on the way back but it was still a grea day.

After Whakatane I made my way to Mount Manganui and spent 4 days watching the 2009 National Kapa Haka Festival.  I thoroughly enjoyed myself and the entertainment that they provided.  The native maori culture is similar to the native indians in Canada.  The english came over and took their land and signed treaties just like in Canada but the Maori’s are using that treaty to their benefit and getting a lot of rights and land back.  It was an interesting weekend because at least 95% of the crowd was Maori and only a few others (whites) were taking in the festival.  They have a lot of problems with drug, alcohol and gangs within their culture and pride of been Maori.  Sound familar to Canada.  I sat beside a Maori family for the entire festival and they were excellent to me.  The son explained a bunch of the competition to me and what was said.  I wondered if the natives in canada had competetions like this???  From what i can recall most native canadian culture is more chanting and drums, here it is all about haka, poi and singing traditional songs.  THe performances were amazing and the costumes were very detailed.  They get judged on a bunch of different categories from 29 judges sent by all the different regions and tribes.  THe family i was sitting with, their tribe placed 3rd and they were very happy.  While I was there I ate some traditional Maori meals as well, Hangi (which I had before and is chicken, stuffing, potato and sweet potato), mussel fritters (yummy) and smoked eel (it was really good and served with dry bread).  I learned a lot about the Maori culture and decided that i probably know very litttle about the natives in Canada and that the majority get judged by the few.  Not that I am preaching because by the end of it i was pretty tired of all those Maori’s.  One thing that i could not understand was after the prizes were awarded they were asked to stay for the final blessing but most (60%) left and did not care.  I talked to a few on the way out and the ones that stayed found that really insulting and why they do have so many issues with their own culture.  The culture in NZ is very different than what i found in Fiji and much prefer what i saw in Fiji. The pic that I have added was the best I could get.  It was strictly forbidden to take pictues of the performing groups but I am pretty good a breaking rules so I took a few and this one is the best I have.

I am now on my way back to Auckland and should get there on Monday night.  I will spend a few days researching my next destination.  In the running are Tasmania, Australia, Tonga, Samoa.  I meet up with Philly on Saturday and we are planning to spent about 2-3 weeks together traveling around any parts that I missed and parts that she would like to see.  We are renting a car so the independance from the busses will be good.

As things continue on back in Canada (ha, ha you still have snow) (sorry) i get to hear lots of things going on and stay in contact thru facebook and some phones calls.  I am sure I am missing lots of birthdays and such but i do remember a few like Aunty Lovina happy bday again I know you’re reading this and loved the phone call.  My buddy Abel has gone off and got married, congrats to Abel and Jennifer the pics looked great.  Lee, Christine and the Dechaine clan went to Jamacia and drank to much rum.  Rob is bitching about beaver camp, no not that beaver camp and Chris is coaching so much basketball he dreams about it in his sleep or maybe they are nightmares.  Kudos go to my godchild Nadean who is acting in a play in Lethbridge, knock’em dead girl!!!

To all, lots of hugs and kisses to those who want them (ladies you know who you are) (I hope).

 Steve

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 at 8:55 pm and is filed under New Zealand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.