After lunch in Te Puia (see previous New Zealand posts), we next headed out into the very rural countryside, to the Kohutapu Tribal Lodge, where we’d have a communal Maori meal and stay the night.
On the way to the lodge, we stopped for a brief hike to some stone carvings made by the original Maori colonizers, who arrived just 800 years ago. (New Zealand was the last major land mass discovered on Earth; remaining uninhabited by humans until around the year 1200 — astonishingly recent!)
The carvings depict the ocean-going canoes they used to get to the place they named Aotearoa; various symbols and animals; and a very large carved head with a long extended tongue, symbolizing cannibalism. Our Maori guide explained cannibalism wasn’t for food, but to absorb the mana of your defeated enemies: You’d eat your enemy’s heart to gain his passion; his brain to gain his knowledge, his eyes to see what he saw; and so on.
The rock carving must have been a pretty effective warning sign along the trail: “You’re entering land controlled by fierce warriors. Trespassers will be eaten.”
The extended tongue and fierce facial expression are still prominent parts of today’s ritual haka display.
More carvings, and our Maori guides, Ema and Charles: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ve3fBV341tEWc3tH7
It was also here that I learned definitively that the Maori don’t call themselves “my-OR-ee,” which is how I’d always pronounced it. Instead, it’s MAH-ori, with a rolled R. (listen)
The Kohutapu Tribal Lodge is on a quiet and beautiful lake in the rural countryside between the Kaingaroa Forest and Te Urewera National Park, near the Bay of Plenty.
We arrived in late afternoon and had some organized fun: We learned a Maori game involving balancing and tossing sticks; we wove armbands and bracelets from the local flax-equivalent plant; learned the Haka; and watched the preparation of our hangi — a meal of chicken, pork, and vegetables, steam-roasted over hot rocks in an earthen pit-oven.
More Pix: Hangi prep; games and weaving and haka
After dinner, we relaxed and enjoyed another late afternoon of spectacular slanting light followed by a gorgeous sunset.
More late-afternoon and sunset pix: https://photos.app.goo.gl/s25QMi6wqYrin1hh7
After dark, we gathered in a fire pit for quiet and convivial conversation; Charles answered our questions about Maori culture, and told us his own life story.
Later, we wandered back to our cabin. I stopped to enjoy the southern stars, undimmed by light pollution.
The rural sky was fantastic!
About 1/4 of Earth’s night sky is never, ever visible from my home location — it’s a geometry thing from living in mid-latitudes on a tilted sphere. I’ve always wanted to see that hidden-to-me portion of the southern night sky, and the full-dark night sky of Murupara did not disappoint.
Although the southern sky has relatively few bright constellations — and the Southern Cross is decidedly underwhelming — the Milky Way is jaw-droppingly beautiful there: A far-southern location lets you peer more or less right towards the heart of our galaxy, where the aggregate starshine is brightest and dust lanes are thickest.
In that very dark, rural sky, the galactic center was truly spectacular — far brighter and more dramatic than the northern hemisphere’s portion of the Milky Way.
Plus, the two Magellanic Clouds — irregular, dwarf galaxies that orbit our home Milky Way galaxy — were easily visible high in the sky. The Magellanic Clouds also aren’t visible from my home, ever; and I’d wanted to see them since I was a kid with his first telescope. 🙂
In the northern part of the New Zealand sky, I could see some of the familiar constellations that would — in six month’s time — be visible in Boston’s night sky; but they were upside down from what I was used to. The moon also appeared upside down; and (like the sun in daylight) it traversed the northern sky, instead of the southern.
(Part of me found the north-south flip mildly but continually disorienting, in the literal sense of the word.)
But seeing that dark and unfamiliar night sky was a wonderful moment, and a great way to close out a very good day.
Next: On to Taupo — and a 15-storey bungee jump!
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