Enter the Maoris

Last Sunday morning, we started our day just outside of Taupo, a lakeside tourist town in the center of the North Island. It was Easter, and the town was chock full of people, international and local tourists alike.

When we arrived on the North Island last week, we planned to do a four day trek around Mount Taranaki, a huge volcano/mountain on the western edge of the island. However, when we arrived at Taranaki, we were greeted with drizzle, freezing air, and a fresh dumping of SNOW on the mountain. No, thank you! we said. So what are we going to do with this chunk of time? We both had our minds set on tramping for a few days, but the North Island just isn't crawling with the quantity - or quality - of walks in the way the South Island is.

We consulted our Lonely Planet "Tramping in New Zealand" book, and discovered a decently interesting sounding walk in Te Urewera National Park - the Whakatane-Waikare River Loop. The trek was four days through native podocarp forest (essentially the rainforest here), up the Whakatane River and back down the Waikare River, both offering "excellent" trout fishing. It was also supposed to be isolated, which was appealing to us after being somewhat startled by the general crowdedness of the North Island compared to the South (3/4 of NZ's population lives up here).

We visited Taupo's visitor's center first thing Sunday morning, hoping to get a bit more information on the walk (a map, perhaps?), as well as a weather forecast, and maybe some insight into how safe/unsafe the area was. We are constantly leaving Betty in places with my laptop locked up inside, and well, it's always a risk.

The visitor's center was a zoo. We waited in line for about 15 minutes behind a couple of Asian girls who were trying to book a white water rafting trip but who were slightly confused by why they couldn't wear their jeans under their wetsuits. But I shouldn't get off on that matter... When we were finally welcomed up to the counter, our helper didn't seem to have any information for us. "Well, it's a pretty remote area," she said. "And they have quite a lot of trouble around there. I mean, I don't want to sound racist, but it's all Maori communities around there, and frankly, there's a lot of unemployment, and well..." she trailed off.

I haven't really spoken at all about the Maori population in NZ, mostly because the majority of the remaining Maori communities are on the North Island, and we simply haven't been around them. I had heard Russell, our WWOOFing host, refer to the dog being down at "the Maori's place" several times, which I thought was odd. You wouldn't say, "Oh, Spot's over at the Native American's place" would you? Maybe it's not comparable. Regardless. Hearing a public servant, an agent at the visitor's center, make such a blatant blanket statement about the Maoris was startling.

Back in the car, we set off down the road for Ruatahuna, the tiny access town to our walk. Our visit to the visitor's center had basically been zero help, but we were determined to proceed with our plans. After re-reading the tramping book, we discovered that the general store in Ruatahuna would let you park your car there and provide security, as well as drop you off at the trailhead. Perfect, we said. As we drove further and further into total nowhereland, NZ, though, we started to have a few doubts. Abotu 30 kilometers outside of the town, the road turns extremely curvy and goes from being paved to gravel. Every roadside picnic spot we passed was covered in trash (not a typical sight in NZ), and at one point we passed a car parked on the side of the road that had been beaten to death - glass broken, tires stolen. What the hell? we thought. What is this place? The scenery, though, was otherwise lovely. Rolling green hills covered with lush forest, dotted here and there with farmland.

We finally came upon Ruatahuna, which couldn't have a population of more than 500, and pulled into the rickety, deserted-looking general store. The "town" consisted of a few ramshackle houses strewn about, with the general store seemingly the center of it all, supplying the only retail opportunities. Sitting outside the store were three or four women, exotic looking with dark hair, skin, and eyes, but dressed carelessly, whiling away their afternoons talking, looking after the store, and well, sitting.

The woman behind the counter was very kind, showed us where to park our car, and, after we got our packs organized and ready, drove us the 11 km to the trailhead herself. I sensed the slightest bit of hesitation from her about our going out into these woods. She mentioned several times that if we weren't out by Wednesday, she would send the Department of Conservation looking for us, and acted like we were crazy when we described the route we had planned. "That's quite a lot. Are you sure you're fit?" Yes, yes, we know what we're doing. We'll be back on Wednesday! She also advised us to be on the lookout for hunters, as something called "The Roar" was currently going on - I think it's when the male deer go out looking for a mate, and they make a loud roaring noise, making themselves good targets for hunters. "There are some silly people out there," she said. GREAT, I thought. This woman was slowly cutting away at my confidence that this hike was a good idea whatsoever. We were going to get involved in a hunting accident, our car was going to get smashed to bits, we were going to get totally lost. Whatever could go wrong would go wrong.

Well, she was wrong. And all of my initial worries slowly fell away. We had the BEST time. The walk was terribly, wonderfully isolated, the weather was warm and sunny, and best, the rivers we were walking along (and through, much of the time) were stuffed with trout. Bjorn caught nine over the course of two days, three of which have since gone into our bellies (the others went back into the river), and we just enjoyed ourselves like crazy. And we met several interesting hunters, a couple of whom were shooting with bows and arrows! They were all wearing very silly camo outfits, but I didn't otherwise find anything too "silly" about them.

(As an aside - Including Saturday, when we did the Tongariro Crossing, we've walked 85 kilometers over five straight days, averaging 17 km per day. Not bad! Though in some ways, I feel like I have lost a lot of my former good (or perhaps obsessive?) fitness/nutrition habits, I also feel like I'm in terribly good shape. These walks make me feel strong and able and accomplished.)

Yesterday, we hitched a ride from the trailhead with one of our new hunter friends, who dropped us back off at the Ruatahuna general store. As we were driving the 11 km through the "town", he said, "Makes you feel kinda ashamed to call this New Zealand, when you look at how these people are living...They're either unemployed, farming, working for the roads, or selling marijuana." And when we arrived at the general store, there were a whole new assortment of people, just sitting around, in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon.

It's an incredibly ignorant question to ask, but I've asked myself several times, Why do the Maoris even bother? What are they holding onto? Why don't they just assimilate into the rest of NZ? Why do they let themselves live like this? Of course, I can answer all of these questions myself, I think. It's culture, it's home, it's roots, it's everything that gives them a sense of self, of place, of origin. Their people were the first to inhabit New Zealand, and so they do - rightly - feel a sense of ownership about the place. But things have changed since the Maoris first arrived 800 years ago, and their position in NZ society has grown lower and lower over time.

I don't know what the answer is here. I was excited to get to this part of the country to finally see some "real" NZ culture, to take in the beautiful and intricate architecture of the Maori buildings and maybe even try to get an inside glance into what these communities were once like. But seeing what it is today is depressing. The communities that haven't "sold out" to tourism are destitute and literal road-ends for any children growing up there, but the communities that are embracing the tourist and putting on Maori shows every night...well, they're selling out, aren't they? I don't know.

Nevertheless, I am enjoying the bits of Maori culture I am being exposed to - the good and the bad. I feel like I am finally seeing a critical part of NZ and beginning to understand New Zealanders - Maori and European descendants alike - in a more thorough way.

We have arrived in Rotorua now and spent the better part of today wandering around. Rotorua, oddly, established itself in the middle of a huge volcanic area - the town essentially sits in a huge, flat crater created by a volcano thousands of years ago. There are natural hot water and hot mud pools all over the place, as well as clouds of sulpuric steam blowing up left and right. You drive through the suburbs here, and there are just huge puffs of white smoke coming up left and right. It seems insane to have a city here, but oh well. I guess that's another one of those ignorant questions I like to ask.

We visited a gorgeous Maori community on the edge of Lake Rotorua and also went to the Rotorua Museum, which is the most beautiful building I've seen in NZ, I think. It was built in 1907 as a sort of "South Seas Healing Spa". Apparently, people flocked to Rotorua from all over to visit the spa and have several weeks worth of water treatments from the natural waters here. That fell out of fashion in the sixties, though, and so they've made the place into a gorgeous museum.

We'll be in Rotorua til tomorrow (we're even going to go to a Maori "concert" and dinner tonight!), then we'll head on up the east coast, gradually making our way towards Auckland. We've got three weeks left, and have quite a bit of business to take care of before we can jet off - namely, selling Betty and figuring out what to do with all the masses of stuff we've accumulated over the last 7 months...yuck.

Photos, photos - http://picasaweb.google.com/ellen.bucy .

Love to you all!