NZ +3: The Maori Experience

Had the full cultural experience this evening at Willowbank. New Zealand history, culture, wildlife, bumper stickers etc all in an hour and a half. I can safely come home now knowing there is nothing left to see...

I was chosen as tribal chief and had to stand there while a Maori warrior came out and gave it all the sticks and waving and shouting and generally scary stuff about two feet away. Then he dropped a leaf on the ground and I had two choices. I could either (a) tread on it, precipitating war or (b) pick it up and rub his nose with mine, meaning we were allowed to go in and watch the singin'n'dancin'. Advised well by the Maori guide (General Grievous in a rug) I chose the latter.

This is the Poi. Basically it's what the women do instead of the Haka* and involves swinging some oversized tennis balls around their heads on the end of a bit of string. I'm sure it had immense cultural significance.



It perhaps has less cultutral significance when done by women in anoraks...



This bit involved them chucking sticks at each other. I think we have to remember that this is the equivalent to something at home like Ye Olde Sherwood Forest Experience, where some students dress up like Robin Hood and his merry men, while perhaps still wearing their trainers, and pretend shoot arrows and steal your wallet as entertainment for tourists.

The give-away that these people were not quite the full Maori ticket was that they dropped the sticks. A lot.



The singing was outstandingly good though. I hope you spotted the genuine Maori guitar in the background.

They then did do the Haka, sans rugby kit, bringing the good ones to the front.

They did the mad staring eyes and the sticking their tongues out.





(* Although, apparently, women do the Haka too.)


We then went on a bit of a wildlife tour and saw eels and kias and lizardy things and pigs and kiwis. Now, I thought kiwis were little birds which sat in the palm of your hand, but they are about as big as chucks (**). They are also very shy, and despite being nocturnal, seemed to be very inactive even though it was pitch black and the Crocodile-Hunter-esque guide had to pick them out of the dark with a torch.

Much more entertaining were the kias, which performed and flew past your ears when you least expected giving you the fright of your life...



(** chickens)