Winter 2019 - NZ9 Maori Dinner on Day 1

NZ9   Maori Dinner on Day 1

We Were Bused From the Hotel to the Hangi

We were bused to a performance of the Maori people. It was a commercial set-up; a show put on by the Maori to show to the public what the Maori culture is or was like. 

The dinner was called a Hangi (a traditional Maori feast).  

Our Guide and Our Dinner

It Was a Good Meal

I paid close attention to how the food was cooked and it was a commercial Hangi with gas jets and wired baskets lined with aluminum foil. It was nice enough, just not authentic enough. But then how do you cook for hundreds of people each day, the old fashioned charcoal fires and earth ovens would not be practical.

A Thick, Creamy Soup

The show the Maori put on for us was like a show in Las Vegas, well a copy of a Vegas show, let’s us say. Plastic chairs for the audience, and the performers were a bit… used to performing?

The Bust of a Villager

We did not visit the Maori; we visited a recreation of a Maori village with modern utensils and chairs. I am not sure if you get the right picture of their life, but it was OK, just not grand. 

A Maori Hut

Before the dinner was served, we were all invited to look around the ‘village’. We, I mean all 400 or so guests in smaller groups, received a guided walk around the property. It’s a beautiful spot.

Entrance to the Village

It’s a beautiful venue when you just look at what nature offers, but the green plastic tents with the large flip up sides, the tables and chairs for hundreds of tourists makes the dinner a: business?

Yes, we saw tattooed guys and girls who showed us how they used to dance, what games they played, how they practiced their fighting, what weapons and instruments they used, etc.

Paddling a Canoe

The Maori group danced, sang and even paddled a canoe down the river. By the way, this river had its spring, its start right on the property. It was an amazing site to see how

the water rushed out of the ground so fast that it could feed the stream the canoe rode on. So much water pouring out at once is hard to believe, but I saw it, it’s like a river started ‘instantly’… just great.

This Spring Is the Source of the River

We had a Maori guide for the evening. He was a personable chap with an easy smile. He knew his particulars and I would have loved to talk to him on a one to one basis, but this was a large tour, there was no time for anything like that.

The general picture I had after this Maori show, my first meeting with a Maori, was of a people who lived historically off the land. They used what the land had to offer and had a complicated set of social lives and it became obvious that family is the most important part of their existence. Not so different from other people in the world but of course, totally different from anything I had seen before, except maybe during my visits to the Polynesian Islands, etc. It was also clear that the men were good warriors, especially in close or hand to hand combat.

Beautiful Voices

Fierce Even the Women

The most outstanding, immediate impressions were the tattoos and or the moko, the facial tattoos. Even the women had tattoos around the mouth, which made me stare a bit when I looked at them. Not nice on my end but I do not see many folks with such body decorations and it piqued my curiosity. I am kind of used to body tattoos; I see a lot of them in today’s day and age, but facial tattoos (moko) are a bit more, what word can I use? - Radical?  

Moko

As far as personalities are concerned, the few Maori I met were just nice folks. They had their job, like all of us and worked in their various professions. I understand that the North Island of NZ is heavily Maori occupied, but to me they just look like ordinary people, albeit most of them are a bit heavy. Their genes are not used to eating today’s sugary food, so they gain weight by eating the diet we eat today. The history of the Maori, the passing along

Elaborate Moko

of information from ancestors, was always an oral history. Stories were told to children who then later told those stories to their children, etc. It was one family with stories, another family with similar or slightly different stories that all ended up to be the culture of the Maori today. 

What is amazing, important really, is that before the year 1250 AD or so, there were no people on NZ. No, there were no animals, no four legged animals at all on NZ. The animals we see today on NZ were all brought to the land by either the Maori or the later European settlers.

Chart Showing Relative Sizes

NZ has native birds, lots of birds, one bird especially was very large, the Moa bird  (like a large ostrich). It was huge in fact, up to 12 feet tall. Not being among humans though, these birds were not afraid of the early Maori settlers so they were easy prey and provided lots of food to the needy first Maori settlers. Over-hunting made them extinct rather quickly during the first centuries after the Maori settled around 1250 AD. 

About 70% of the Maori (People of the Four Winds), are urban people today. Historically there were about 40 distinctly different tribes, but today the tribes are heavily intermixed.  

But I leaned all of this by reading; the motorcycle tour did not give us any info on the history of NZ, nor particulars on its native people. Riding, eating and drinking was the main focus of this trip with Fred.