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.

Winter 2019 - NZ8 Ride on Day 1 of Our MC Tour

NZ8   Ride on Day 1 of Our MC Tour

The actual rental office for our bikes was Te Waipounamu Motorcycle Tours, Ltd. Fred Rau had a deal with them, I guess, I am not privy to the set up between Fred and Te Waipounamu. In my mind I was just dealing with Fred since that is the guy we signed up with, the guy who sent us emails previous to our tour, Fred who was our guide, our go to person if we had any questions or issues.

Bikes Came From Te Waipounamu Tours

On day one of our tour I learned that Ellis Emmett was assigned the spot of assistant to Fred, the person who handled the support portion of the trip. Ellis would drive the van that followed us throughout NZ, Ellis was the person who would maintain the bikes, Ellis was the person who would manage our luggage, etc. Fred was just our guide; he would guide us on his motorcycle and tell us the spots to see. Fred was on a bike, Ellis was in a van. There was no other helper; we were 18 people on the tour plus Fred and Ellis.

Day one was a ride from our hotel in Auckland to Rotorua on the North Island of NZ. 

Way before this first day ride we were given an email of our total itinerary, this brochure had all pertinent info in it like a list of our names, hotels with their addresses and some general info about each area we were riding through. It was up to each of us to study this booklet but basically, we had to have it with us in each day’s stage. We received a more professional copy of this brochure with colored pictures at the get acquainted dinner before the ride. So, yes, we had the info on 44 single-sided sheets of computer generated printed pages, on paper, stapled together. It was bulky. 

Welcome Dinner - Big Group

I am not good with paper sheets in my riding jacket, or even having it dangling off my bike someplace. Carol is much better in that respect. I like to add directions on to the GPS and then forget about them. So naturally I missed having a definite idea where we would end up each night; none of the hotels had their GPS co-ordinates listed. I would have preferred to get a download of the total route, enter all info into the GPS, and then forget about the details each day.  But we all ride a different ride. So I had to enter addresses to the GPS each day after we received verbal instructions from Fred. Not that great for me who cannot hear too well.

On day one we did not ride as just ONE group but had options. If you wanted to ride the shortest route to Rotorua, then it was suggested you follow Ellis in the van.  

Carol opted to follow the van that Ellis drove. I rode with the larger group. If you wanted to go on your own, not following anybody, you were encouraged to do that, too. Fred jokingly said he would love to come out of his hotel in the morning and see all the bikes gone. That would mean all riders had taken their own initiative and ridden to the next destination without needing Fred. 

Hmmm, do we need Fred?

Hans On His Own Today

But most riders, being strangers in a new country and without a GPS, followed Fred on his bike who led us along the coast (Route 25) towards tonight’s hotel in Rotorua. I had to ask for the hotel address, it’s on my GPS now, I have no idea where this place is otherwise). I forgot this address was in the email we all received previously and in the booklet Fred handed out the previous night. Carol had it, of course, but I was not riding with Carol that day. Duh!

It did not take long before the group that followed Fred, me among them, got totally spread out. I followed the bike in front of me, keeping an eye on the bike behind me. That is about all I could do, as long as the guy behind me was in my mirror and I could see him and I could see whom I followed, I believed we were a coherent group. But I found out rather soon after we hit the twisties along the coastal road (Route 25) that we were a group of 3 bikes only; The man in front of me and one man behind me. Hmmm, lucky for me that I had a GPS and could, if need be, find my way to the hotel for the night. I am not sure how others dealt with this, not everybody had a GPS on their bike. You had to book a GPS before leaving home or bring your own. 

And Then There Were Three

Granted, the riding style of people on this tour was vastly different. That was immediately evident after we came upon the twisty roads along the coast. Some riders were very careful trying to just get past each twist and corner, while others rode much more daringly, flying even past me, to take advantage of this beautiful road and its racetrack-like venue. What to do?  We are all different people, we all ride differently! Carol opted for this first day to follow Ellis in his van, she did not ride with me; she rode separately, choosing a totally different route.

I am still a bit too dumbstruck to say anything.  I have ridden in groups many times before, but this was the first time for me where each rider just rode his ride, and not a group ride. I was taught to ride in formation, to not ride wildly off into the horizon, and to try to keep the group together. If I don’t see the headlight of the person behind me, I stop to see if the person catches up to me, if not then something is wrong and I would turn around, trying to see what is ‘wrong’.

Well, the rules of group riding were not explained by Fred last night. Maybe he thought everybody knew what to do. Let’s see how the debriefing for the first day’s ride goes tonight, just get past this coastal road, meet up and then adjust our riding style. We’ll see! I did not see Fred at all during the coastal ride.

The first day, during the daylight, was just riding. It was not a day with excursion-like talks. Nobody spoke about the specific things we saw along the way, nobody mentioned the history of the places we passed, and nobody gave us a tour. It was just riding, riding, riding.

The Road #25 around the Coromandel Peninsula is a fantastic ride. The Coromandel Peninsula is a fantastic destination and should be studied, but  I understand that we have no time for that, we need to ride, get to our destination, ride the total distance for the day which was about 365 km of mostly twisty roads according to the brochure we received. It was a difficult ride for day one, maybe too long a ride? Especially since that night we had a visit to a Maori dinner and dance show in Rotorua, too. The trip started off being over packed with activities. There never was a debriefing; there never was a talk session or a mutual sharing of experiences. Ride your ride; I thought… there never will be a better, different way to ride with this group.

Start In Auckland (Upper (L), End In Rotorua (Off the Map Lower (R) - Coromandel Hwy Is the Purple Line Around the Peninsula

Carol and I decided right after day one to now ride OUR ride. We have intercoms and GPSs, we will ride as a team, we will follow the general directions, ride in the group if need be, but otherwise we will ride our speed, our way of riding. We will meet up with the people at lunches, dinners, etc, but basically, I learned that Fred was a good writer, not a good ride leader. Too bad, we paid for a guided DELUXE tour, but there are just too many riders with too few ride leaders, and too big a distance each day.  Ah, let’s not be hasty in judgment Hans, one day at a time. I am just a bit shocked about the disarray I was faced with on day one, I guess.