Our road trip continues the next day as we start to make our way back to the east coast towards Whangarei. About half way to our final destination we planned on stopping at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds. However, on the road we pass by a little avocado stand where we stop to make a purchase. Usually it is on the honor system where you take your avos and leave the money in a box or bin. However, as we were selecting the best ones the farm owner came up on a 4-wheel drive ATV and started chatting with us.
Mike owned the Matalaka Trust and was so amazingly kind and generous. He showed us around his 8 hectre farm, explained how avocado farming worked, let us drive his ATV and picking machine and shared his private home brew beer with us! We left with dozens of avocados!
Waitangi Treaty Grounds
We decided to take the one-hour tour and 30-minute cultural show at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds. But before the tour started, we had 50 minutes to enjoy the very well laid out Te Kongahu museum. It was so fascinating that we ended up circling back to the museum to see the bits and pieces that we rushed by the first time. The award-winning museum presents the events leading up to, during, and after the signing of the Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the Treaty of Waitangi.
The tour took us by the world’s longest canoe or waka called Ngatokimatawhaorua. This amazingly long waka was built in 1940 and is made from 3 very large kauri trees. Two trees made the length of the waka and the third tree was used for all of the intricate carvings. There were no nails, glue, or screws used in the making of this waka. It is held together by twine.
This 6-ton waka grows to 12 tons when wet. It takes several days to soak the waka before the wood closes the gaps and the waka can be deemed sea worthy.
Cultural Show
The cultural show is meant for the tourist to learn the ways of the Maori people. They start off by selecting a tribe leader for the tourists and our friend Rokas was “voluntold” to represent us. He was Chief Rokas and Simona was his “lady chief.” As chief, he had to give a little welcome speech just after the Maori leader gave his. He did a wonderful job!
Through song and dance they shared their culture, beliefs, and background.
Each hand, arm, and body movements has a meaning.
They showed off their skills with the pom balls.
And their not so good skills with the sticks that seemed to land on the ground more than they liked.
This one guy had the best facial expressions!
Many carved tikis surrounded the interior of the meeting house.
We all posed with the dancers afterwards.
Here is a photo of our hostel. We had 4 sets of bunk beds in one room with a shared bathroom.
It was a fabulous 2.5 day road trip with wonderful friends!
And here is our track around the North tip of the North Island.
Events from this blog occurred in late December 2022. Our blog posts run 6-8 weeks behind actual events. Part I of our Road Trip was covered in our last blog post.