Saturday, February 19, 2011

Kappa Haka: Part 1

Feb. 19, 2011
Surf Sessions = 4
Km Driven = 5000

In the morning we realized that our van was in desperate need of a new tyre (how “tire” is spelled in the “Queen’s English”) as our right rear one suddenly had some noticeable metal braid poking through.  We had images of this taking hours and hours, but were happily surprised to find that the local shop was just a few hundred meters away and the price was very reasonable!  They had it done quite quickly and we used the time to get a little breakfast, enjoy some buskers in the main street area, and get Maia some new water shoes. 
George dropped off Maia and I at Matitini while he went to move all of our stuff to our new cabin (spacious, looking at the beach and with a kitchen) up north of Gizzy ( ½ hour drive) at Tolaga Bay and check out the surf along the way.  I was really impressed and amazed by the organization and breadth of things at the competition.  First we took a shuttle (riding on a trailer behind a tractor) from the parking to the event area.  This took us through the vineyard (nope, the grapes are not quite ready yet…but the vines were whipping us about!).  After we got our passes (Maia had free entrance) we walked to the youth stage.  We enjoyed listening to an excellent couple of young Maori men doing original Reggae tunes.  Reggae is quite popular here and is used as a means for making political/social statements in the way Bob Marley did it.  Then Maia insisted we move on to “Haka!” She was distracted on the way by the Khotanga Reo being held…complete with jumpy castle, water games, spray on tattoos (Maia got dolphins on her leg) and art projects.  Then her attention moved to the fact that there was a very large water slide built into the hillside (with a long line of kids). Now when I say “water slide” what I really mean is 150 feet of black plastic laid into a fairly steep runnel in the hillside terminating in the “mud pool”! At least 2 dozen kids had extended their “tans” to a dozen shades browner via layers of wet and dried mud from head to toe. Finally we made it to the main stage!  We arrived just as one group was finishing.  I held Maia on my shoulders to watch the end of this performance and then we made our way to the front (a 15 minute endeavor).  We were glad to get to the front, but realized soon that it was too hot and too crowded for a toddler.  So we moved back to somewhere around the middle of the venue and were happy to find Vivian!  That was quite a task in a crowd of thousands! So we watched the performances from there (several big screens helped make up for our distance from the stage) and appreciated the fact that we were closer to the vendors (fresh corn on the cob, watermelon…so nice to be in summer in the southern hemi!) We also sat next to a woman who is a policy professor at North Palmerston.  She enlightened me as to some questions I had about headlines, Maori party politics, and coastline rights issues. Maia and I really enjoyed all of the groups, but I was left with no idea which ones might make it to the finals. I would highly and strongly recommend looking up Te Matitini o Te Ra on YouTube so you can enjoy some of it too! 
George picked us up around 5pm and we drove back to the new cabin on the beach.  It is right next to an historic wharf in Tolaga Bay that is 660 meters long (around 0.4 miles); this is the longest wharf in the entire southern hemisphere.  We walked the wharf after supper to enjoy the scenery, watch the waves roll past, and just stretch a bit.  Maia ran about 2/3 of the way out and back, which was fun and a little nerve wracking as the “historic wharf” is in a bit of a shambles.
The full moon seemed to have more features than we recall seeing in quite some time. 
Moon over Tolaga Bay Wharf

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