{"id":4378,"date":"2020-03-11T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-11T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/langa.com\/?p=4378"},"modified":"2020-03-10T16:14:16","modified_gmt":"2020-03-10T20:14:16","slug":"new-zealand-a-night-in-a-rural-maori-family-lodge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/langa.com\/index.php\/2020\/03\/11\/new-zealand-a-night-in-a-rural-maori-family-lodge\/","title":{"rendered":"New Zealand: A night in a rural Maori family lodge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After lunch in Te Puia (see previous New Zealand posts<\/a>), we next headed out into the very rural countryside, to the Kohutapu Tribal Lodge<\/a>, where we’d have a communal Maori meal and stay the night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The carvings depict the ocean-going canoes they used to get to the place they named Aotearoa<\/a><\/strong>; 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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The extended tongue and fierce facial expression are still prominent parts of today’s ritual haka<\/a> display. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

More carvings, and our Maori guides, Ema and Charles: https:\/\/photos.app.goo.gl\/ve3fBV341tEWc3tH7<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Kohutapu Tribal Lodge<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Just woods, water, and hills for miles around<\/em>: Map<\/a><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We arrived in late afternoon and had some organized fun: We learned a Maori game<\/a> involving balancing and tossing sticks; we wove armbands and bracelets from the local flax-equivalent<\/a> plant; learned the Haka<\/a>; and watched the preparation of our hangi<\/a> — a meal of chicken, pork, and vegetables, steam-roasted over hot rocks in an earthen pit-oven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n