Maori Wannabe - 1-22-12

Haka, baby.

All Black jersey.

Having read, heard about and discussed the Maori culture during our time in Australia, we started off our time in New Zealand with a trip to the Auckland War Memorial Museum, located in Aucklands beautiful botanical gardens, to experience the "Maori Cultural Experience".  Ohhh ahhh, so I thought, but this turned out to be more than just a cliche play on the culture to please the expectations of we, the tourist. The performance put on was done by direct descendents of the Maori people and their performance was awesome, just check out the videos.  They were a pretty gnarly group of people who supposedly came over thousands of years ago by boat from Indonesia.  That tough cultural identity is portrayed through their customs and traditions, and this performance did a great job of illustrating that.  This also drew back a memory I remember of seeing the All Blacks Rugby team do the "Haka", the Maori tribal war "dance".  Not so much a dance as much as an intimidating means of threatening and perhaps dissuading the enemy before war.  No wonder the All Blacks, founded on an all Maori team, won the world rugby championship played here in Auckland.  Forget Aussies, these are a gnarly people with incredible heritage and tradition.

Steele photo-bombed every device in the phone store.

When, admittadly naively, imagining how the culture and general demographic of New Zealand would be, I assumed that the majority of individuals would be employed in some sort of outdoor/adventure industry such as bungee jumping, fishing, rafting, rock climbing, or what have you.  I was shocked to see not only the amount of Maori population, but also the remnants of their traditions, language and culture scattered throughout the whole of Auckland.  There seems to be an extremely symbiotic relationship between the indigineous people and the most recent settlers; something that is quite refreshing and rare to see.  to illustrate, we have been greeted by several Caucasian individuals in the traditional Maori tongue in order to honor their heritage, and there are several Maori television channels that broadcast strictly Maori entertainment: something I don't think I would frequent even if I could understand their language, having seen bits and pieces of their attempts at sitcoms.   Their seems to have been an extraordinarily peaceful assimilation and willingness to coexist between the indigenous people and the more recent inhabitants.  Something that is quite impressive and wholesome as compared to their closest neighbor's relations.  Great to see.

Matt getting a bit of a tight squeeze in the door.

Vulcan Street: awesome food and beer.

After our museum stint, we went into the heart of Auckland on Queen Street to get some long over due grubbing.  We found an alleyway tucked back from the street that was a simple walking lane full of really cool restaurants, one of which - I come to find out a couple of days later - employs a long lost love from Brazil, but that story is for another time.  We had an incredible meal, a couple of pints, and a subsequent food coma.  Recovering from our pie and pint induced slumbers, we did something presumably awesome.  I can't quite recollect what that was at this point, but I will reconvene with the group ang get back to that later.  Great first day, looking forward to more of the same.

Cheers.