Te Puia

I spent a whole day at Te Puia, getting thoroughly immersed in Maori culture. The introductory tour was led by Shane
with the amazing comb in his hair. He was a very able and interesting guide who explained a lot about Maori culture, the geothermal stuff and the native wildlife.














The tour took us past bubbling mud pools, and on to see the famous geyser - they call them guisers as geezers are old fellas! We call them geezers as guisers are folk who get dressed up at halloween to do something like the American trick or treating! Anyway, back to Pohutu. It erupts several times a day and often displays for long periods of time,shooting steaming water up into the air about 20 metres - quite a sight!






Next to Puhutu is the Prince of Wales feathers geyser, which erupts just before Pohutu, and though not nearly as impressive, still looks pretty amazing.





















And just to prove I was there, here's me and Pohutu!
The pink bangle was the entrance ticket to Te Puia!









Near to Pohutu are the hot seats, in the photo occupied by a group of overseas visitors having their photo taken! These terraces have obviously been man-made, constructed over a hot spring or hot rocks as they are really warm, as if the sun has been shining on them all day. Very relaxing!





There was more thermal stuff - a hot lake, note that nothing is growing round the edges;

huge big holes in the ground erupting steam (who'd want to cross the fences from the pathways?);

and little bubbling hot springs! There's one inside the red circle. The next pic gets closer!























You may have to click this one to see the spring better!



The culmination of the tour was a Maori concert in the Rotowhio meeting house. There is quite a protocol about entering a marae, and we all assembled at the gateway to await our leader.





She explained what would happen, which was that a warrior would come out to meet us. He would perform a haka, one of the ceremonial action chants to establish if we came as friends or enemies. He would lay down a leaf and our "chief" would have to pick it up, as a gesture of friendship. Then we would be led along the path to the meeting house, take our shoes off and enter the building.














Although this is not one of my photos, but a photo of a poster at Te Puia, this is the idea of what happened next.

Posters from Te Puia, Rotorua

Once inside there would be speeches, chief to chief, but in our case the Maori chief made a long speech in Maori, and all our "chief" had to do was greet him with a hongi - pressing noses with him.

Then the concert followed, with action songs, a haka or two, some stick throwing and some poi twirling. It was very enjoyable, and as I had travelled all through South Island playing my new Best Maori Songs of the last 100 years, or something like that, on the car CD player, I found I could hum along with a few of the tunes! Here are a few photos from the concert....

(I actually have a photo of the girl on the right, taken 9 years ago on my last visit! It's not digital and my scanner isn't working so I can't upload it here just now.)
















































At the end of the show there was an opportunity for a photoshoot so I managed to collar these two likely lads who posed beautifully for this shot! Do you think they had done this before?





The Maori girl's skirt is made of dried flax leaves fastened onto a band made of the flax fibres. Her top and headband have been hand-woven from dyed flax fibres. She is wearing a traditional bone ornament on a flax fibre string round her neck, and the poi, the white and red balls at her waist are made of flax material attached to lengths of flax fibre strings. Versatile stuff, flax!




I spent the rest of my visit just wandering round the site again and ended up with a visit to the school of woodcarving and the school of weaving opposite.




















This is Noelene, stripping the green part of the leaf away, with a broken paua shell, to reveal just the fibres, which Taini (Tiny) uses to make threads and strings for weaving.









This is how it's done!!! Rolled across the leg to twist the fibres, over the knee to combine two strings and rolled back to form the required thickness of thread or string.


I'm not too sure how the weaving is actually done as it appears they don't use looms. Maybe next time I'll go and find out!

So, all for now. Soon be time to cross back to Australia, but I still have a few photos left from NZ! That's for next time!
Talk again soon!