Happy Waitangi Day!

Maori Protest March @ Waitanigi

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Happy Waitangi Day!

Fast Facts:

* New Zealand is larger than Great Britain

* The name New Zealand has evolved from its original name: New Sea-land.

* Lamb is big here in restaurants.

We’re not going to post every time we change hotels but this destination is quite monumental. And it all came together quite by accident.

North of Auckland is a lesser destination called the Northland. About three hours from Auckland, in the Northland is a place called Pahia, across the bay from Russell and adjacent to Waitangi. Pahia is kind of touristy, nice spot all in all. But Waitangi is notable for being the place where the Maoris signed their treaty with Great Britain in February of 1840 allowing it to be colonised. This is celebrated as a national holiday each February, and the centre of all the attention is in Waitangi. So not only we were in the county over this holiday, we were headed for and staying at the treaty site on its anniversary. And the treaty grounds are adjacent to our hotel. Neat!

Sudden Hail Storm

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We arrived to find a carnival kind of atmosphere including a couple of protest marches. There has been controversy around the treaty interpretation since almost when it was signed. (Sound familiar?) and Waitangi Day all too often results in some violence, but there was none today. The Maoris evolved from the Polynesians that “discovered” New Zealand. Europeans didn’t begin to arrive until late in the 18^th century and the country was late to the colonization party. As such the process was much more civilized; treaty and all. There were probably 600,000 Maoris at the time but the numbers declined. Now the numbers are growing again with around 450,000 today. About 45,000 of them were in Wait to celebrate.

Stayed at an ocean-side hotel, the Copthorne Resort. Nice enough but with outstanding views of the Bay. The general area is called Bay of Islands with about 150 Islands. Arrived in hot sunshine, probably around 27 degrees or so. Around 6:00 a storm blew in in an instant. Heavy rain which turned to hail. One minute we were sitting in the hot sun. Literally five minutes later we had to go inside to escape the hailstones. Twenty minutes later it was sunny and warm again.

Hole in the Rock

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Ate a great meal at Bistro 40. The young man that serving us overheard our conversation and asked if we were from Canada. Turns out he’s from Fredericton and is on a two year travel plan working his way around to a number of places in Australia and New Zealand. What are the odds? I told him that I had three nieces in school in Fredericton that weren’t too bad looking and gave him their phone numbers for when he gets back home.

Next day we took a boat tour all afternoon. Hopped around to different islands, got a sense of the history, that kind of thing. Got lots of pictures of rocks and water. There were two highlights. One was a stop for a cold beer on the isolated island of Urupukapuka, where Zane Grey used to visit and game-fish. I think I remember reading the novel Trouble at the Urupukapuka Corral. Now I know where the inspiration came from. The second highlight was a natural phenomenon in the middle of the bay called “Hole in the Rock”. How can I describe it? It’s sort of like a rock. And it has a hole in it. But quite a large rock. And quite a large hole. We were on a large motorized Catamaran and the hole is just large enough for it to fit through. However, today the ocean swells were too large and the captain elected not to give it a try. Something about sinking one more ship this year wouldn’t look good on his performance review.

Belugas are often sighted in this area

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Claire and I got off at Russell, across the harbour from Pahia. Strolled around this town of 1,100 which was the original capital of New Zealand. Very New Englandy. Then took the water taxi back to Pahia and home. Ate dinner that night at Tides where we met the “rudest server in the world”. See upcoming stand alone review if you’re interested. (Note re the reviews. These aren’t really part of our journal but are reviews posted for fellow travellers that may be heading to the area to check out.)

Up the next morning, spent a couple of hours at the Waitangi treaty house. Jumped in the car for the 6 hour drive to the peninsula, south east of Auckland. Next stop Whitianga on the Coromandel Peninsula.

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QUESTION OF THE DAY

Evidence of my existance in New Zealand

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1) This week is back to school week for New Zealanders after the summer holidays. Going back to school in February, is a strange concept to get your head around but of course it makes perfect sense. In Canada the warmest months of July and August are called summer and that’s when school is out. In New Zealand the warmest months are December and January, they call it summer and give the kids the “summer” off. It’s easy to figure it out for a far north country compared to a far south country. But where’s the cut-off? Is it the equator? And if so does one country near the equator but on the north side call July & August summer and another a few hundred miles to the south call December and January summer? Logical but doesn’t sound very practical. So the question of the day is how is it decided to call a particular area summer? Secondarily, does the school system follow that definition? There is probably an answer of some sort that applies to different continents but don’t have a clue how you’d apply it to equatorial countries.

The winners for the last contest were Betty Dever and Dave Kent. I would ask that you credit the source. I know that my sister doesn’t know these things by herself so she had to look it up and the source would add some legitimacy. Dave had only a vaguely right answer but he gets points for promptness.

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WHAT I LEARNED TODAY

1) I’ve heard many, many Canadians say they feel a sense of commonality with New Zealand. Comments around the outdoors, nice people that kind of thing. But it’s only today that I see the evidence that we’re way too similar. I’m not making the following up. All of the following articles or commentaries were in this mornings paper:

a. Extensive debate about how best to deal with the aboriginals, and in particular the legal and ethical elements of signed treaties.

b. Observation that there was a better way of selecting the Governor General rather than having the Prime Minister pick them. Argues that there should be some kind of electoral process.

c. Complaints about the arrogance and the lack of awareness of its neighbouring larger trading partner including a particular long suffering debate around tariffs on one particular natural resource.

d. Concerns around the inability to live up to the Kyoto commitments.

Sound familiar? If there had been one more article, say, talking abut some inane thing said or done by Ralph Klein, I would have thought that I was reading the Globe & Mail in Canada.

What I learned today is that New Zealand has a remarkable number of socio political similarities to Canada.