Experiencing Some Culture in our Time Off

So we had our first real weekend off this past weekend! Our program is only 25 people, so it's pretty easy for us to split up when doing things on our time off or coordinate bigger trips. For this first weekend, there was actually a national holiday in New Zealand called Waitangi day. It's a holiday that commemorates the first signing of the treaty between the native Maori people and pakeha (white men).. We went to the festival that was happening in Manukau (a subsection of Auckland). It wasn't really what I expected, although to be fair, I didn't really know what to expect. It was in a big open field, and there was a huge stage at one end where musical performances and other big events happened. The rest of the field had open space for the crowd, a section of food/craft tents, and at the back was the HUGEST COLLECTION OF MOON BOUNCES & FRIENDS that I've ever seen! It was a kid's paradise. Anyhow, we had stopped at a local market nearby before we went to the festival, just to check out some day to day NZ life, and I like that just as much!
They had tons of fresh produce and some fried foods, and lots of tents with clothes, crafts, and other random stuff.. not unlike a flea-market, but with more culture than I've ever seen. I bought an awesome picture frame from a Kiwi (typically refers to a white/European New Zealander), and a few other things from this really sweet Maori woman. But there were also a great deal of Indians, Samoans, and other Asians walking around the market and the festival. We saw a group of fully dressed middle-eastern men as well as some Buddhist monks at the festival! It was really great, just to experience day-to-day culture in this country. We spend a lot of time studying the environment, so getting some genuine time with ordinary people was nice. And New Zealand certainly has more diversity than I expected.

I was also able to buy LOTS of souveniers :)

We stayed at the festival for a few hours, where we saw a lot of different versions of the NZ flag. The country has actually been considering changing their flag recently, so I think people were particularly paying attention to the flags that those around them were choosing to fly. For instance, recently a new flag (tino rangatiratanga) was designed to represent the Maori culture and people, and that was being flown by many people, while some maintained the current national flag... the host on stage made it a point to encourage people to fly whatever flag they chose and insisted that there would be no reprecussions or bad tensions from doing so. I did notice a little bit of tension here and there though. More than a few actually chose to fly one of NZ's old national flags, which I really liked and would like to buy. It was the flag of the United Tribes of New Zealand, and tends to have connections to both Maori and the British.

The performances at the festival were pretty good... they had some traditional Maori singers and polynesian dancers perform, modern popular New Zealand music, all-girl hip hop dancers, and even the guy who won Australian Idol last year.. Stan something. He's actually a Maori guy, and hes got a pretty good voice.

So after we spent a few hours at the festival, we hopped on a bus into Auckland city. We got there by mid-afternoon so we had all evening and night to explore. Our hostel (which was my first one, and was very nice!), our transportation station, and our ferry pier for the next day were all within blocks of eachother, which was great! We got to do some walking along the piers in the afternoon, do some shopping and ice cream eating, and take plenty of pictures. We had a bit to eat at our hostel and then I got my first official order of fish and chips at this restaurant on the pier haha. It wasnt bad! We then went to this ice bar, which is basically a small bar that is completely made of ice! You have to pay a pretty high cover fee, but they give you a huge coat and mittens to wear, and you go in and the bar and walls and benches are all covered in ice, and there are ice sculptures everywhere. You basically get to spend about half an hour in there, and they give you a complementary cocktail in a glass completely of ice... the best part was when people would walk by outside and look in the window and be totttally surprised. It was definitely an interesting experience! Cool stuff..

The next day, Sunday morning, we got up and headed back to the pier to catch a ferry to Rangitoto island. It's about a 20 minute ferry ride and it takes you to an island with a really young volcano.. I think it's less than 1,000 years old, but its pretty small and hasn't been outright active in a very long time. But it was really awesome. We hiked a trail up to the summit and stopped to climb through lava caves along the way... my first real cave experiences! I got to test out that headlamp finally, in a real situation! It was awesome, the caves were often really small and crowded and took some real maneuvering, but then some of them opened up into these big caverns. Some had no exits and some went on for about 100 feet before reaching a steep climb and small opening that brought us back out into the daylight. When we reached the summit, the views were amazing. They had a whole deck up there and you could basically get 360 degree views. It was only a 20 min ride from Auckland city, so you could see the whole city obviously. Auckland has a nice but small downtown area... for the most part its a sprawling land of crowded houses... Almost a third of NZ's population is all located in Auckland, so its a pretty big deal. Anyway, the views were great. Our way back to the ferry wharf was less eventful... we tried to take a different track back that stopped by a beach, but we didn't have time to swim, so we ended up going on a rather boring 5-6 km detour in the open and blazing sun. Not so much fun! But that whole road was surrounded by that island's typical mix of huge areas and rivers of jagged black and barren volcanic rock and random patches and large areas of trees mixed in. It was so strange... you'd have just tons of jagged black with no life growing, and then a whole stream of trees in the middle of it randomly. It was interesting...

Anyhow, that was my weekend!
Tomorrow morning (tuesday) we're leaving to spend 4 days in Opoutere, which is on the east side of the Coromandel peninsula (see the map up there). We'll be staying in a hostel the entire time, and studying the estuary there, looking at the different sub-ecosystems and potential management plans I believe. We're going to get kayak training (finally! then we'll be able to use kayaks when we're at our home base) so we can do some learning and observing via kayak while we're there. It will still be a lot of work though, and long days, since we'll be waiting for different tide conditions...compared to the weather the states are getting though, this week sounds awesome to me! Friday afternoon we'll be dropped off in the town of Thames for our weekend off, where we'll grab rental cars and head off on another adventure!

This is the exciting part! Friday night a group of us will be driving back to the east coast of the coromandel where we're hoping to reach Hot Water Beach by nightfall, which is this beach where you literally dig a hole in the sand and it fills with hot water.. this basically means you can dig your own sauna/hot tub! It's supposed to be awesome to do at night, so that should be fun. We'll camp near the area and Saturday we'll spend the day hiking and beach bumming at cathedral cove, which is this beautiful beach that is known for the gigantic natural stone arch way that hovers over the entrance to the beach... its supposed to be an amazing site, and apparently there are some good hikes that we can do in the area, which will hopefully end in some secluded beaches where we can just enjoy the privacy of a beautiful beach for a day. Then Saturday night we'll be camping somewhere thats on the way to New Chums beach, which is our destination for Sunday morning. This is a beach that seems to be pretty much in the middle of nowhere (we couldnt even find any camping sites remotely nearby) but its supposed to be one of the top 10 beaches of the world!!! So I'll be having a nice and hopefully relaxing and beautiful weekend! Our drive back to Ecoquest Sunday evening will basically take us through the rest of the Coromandel peninsula, which is full of mountain ranges and some pretty scenery, so even the drive back should be nice.

Hopefully this week will all go according to plan! But even if it doesnt, I know we'll have a great time. Speaking of time, its time for bed! Until next time, :)