"all we like sheep"

    On the way to Whakatane we stopped at Kiwiworld, at the town of Te Puke...a name that's only appropriate if you hate kiwi fruit, but we have been enjoying the rarer, sweeter "golden kiwi" since we've been here, and we've eaten Kiwi Berries, which are delicious. (We once sailed on a West Coast supply ship, the Uchuck...of course you can guess what its nickname was.) 

    At Matata we spotted the local Loch Ness Monster through the rain and fog, and snapped a photo to prove that it exists.

      We've arrived at Kyrill and Gaylene's house. Kyrill is a retired Seventh Day Adventist minister who originally trained as a botanist; Gaylene retired from a nursing career but is a busy midwife. Kyrill probably forgets nothing. He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the plants in his garden, his solar heating system and plumbing set-up, the local volcanic activity, shore birds and their migration routes, Maoris and other Pacific Islanders, and their history, the history of Whakatane, and many other things. 

    You will learn a lot by listening to him, but you might have to remain focussed for a long time to soak it all in; he will not tell you a short story if he can find a way to turn it into a longer one. He showed us his tamarillos, his feijoa, his sweet lemons that are as easy to eat as oranges, nashi "pears", figs, other citrus, passion fruit and many other plants in his garden. I usually try to provide hyperlinks in case you want to click through to see what each of these unusual names refers to, but this time there are so many - I guess you can google what you don't know. 

    The locals call this town Whakatane, in four syllables sort of like Japanese, but the first consonant is more of an "F" sound than a "Wh". You might enjoy saying it out loud the way the locals do, whenever you get frustrated about something...just feels so good, somehow (hah! I can hear Emily repeating it all the way from here: "Oh, Whakatane!" It's almost as satisfying as saying, "Aww...Suckatash!") 

    It is in an area of 280 identified earthquake fault lines, one of them only 300 metres from the house. We talked for a while about the likelihood of an earthquake or an eruption while we are here; there have been some doozies within the last couple of hundred years. One benefit of the unstable volcanic geography is that there are hot mineral springs everywhere. Tourists often pay a lot to go to a "spa", while locals go to free public pools where the schoolchildren clamour. 

    Deb and I opted to pay a few dollars at a local Awakeri caravan park and hot springs a little out of town. It's a bit like just soaking in a hot bath, but the water was cooled to a tolerable temperature, chlorinated, and the sulphur had blown off before it got to the pool where we were. We had the pool to ourselves except for three young Swedish travellers, quite possibly au pair girls - a lot of young women from Europe get here for a season by doing au pair work. 

    We went downtown and took a photo of the building that has travelled around the world and returned home, and as we were there we heard a loud "Haka" coming from over the fence - sounded just like this one. "Oh," I thought, "there must be a rugby game on, or something", so I dashed next door. There was a procession of people, flags, colourful helium balloons...then I realized many were dressed in black, some were supported by family, I heard some crying, and some of the men were carrying a coffin. We'd stumbled into a funeral, so I hung back and respectfully kept my camera in my pocket. 

    A young 28 year old had died of heart attack. He belonged to a significant family, and it seemed as though the entire Maori population (about 35% of this town) was present to watch him taken to the traditional Waka and rowed out to an old, special cemetery on a sacred island across the bay from the wharf. 

    Kyrill took us on a driving tour of the area and we learned all about the Maori landing, circa 1350, and the special Waka they came in. A Waka gets blessed, and named, and is a revered object to the Maori. There is a lovely story about a chief's daughter who saved the day when their canoe drifted away from shore while the men were on shore.  The women, who were in the canoe, were not permitted to touch the paddles or anything to do with propelling the craft - it was taboo.  The chief's daughter became a heroine by breaking the taboo in an emergency.

    In the evening I went to choir practice with Kyrill. The town ecumenical choir is working on the Messiah, so I sat in with the basses. One line in a chorus which repeated several times seemed so appropriate to New Zealand..."all we like sheep"...! The conductor also made a joke about "in the style of Bach - J.S. Bach, that is, not tree baak..." - the joke would've fallen completely flat in Canada, but in a Kiwi accent, it worked. I was bemused. 

    Feb 17th - Today we drove through the Waioeka Gorge, with tree ferns along the steep hillsides.  The scenery looked like The Land Before Time. It was sunny, a perfect day. Cicadas sang with deafening volume, and we followed logging trucks that perfumed the air with the smell of Pinus Radiata, a tree indigenous to California but which harvests as straight, thick timber in 35 years compared to 300 years for indigenous New Zealand hardwoods, which are much finer grained (closer, tighter rings, slower growing). 

    Gisborne is the place where Captain Cook first introduced himself to the Maori, on my birthdate, in 1769. They did not get along at first, and about six Maoris were killed in initial skirmishes. He called the place Poverty Bay because it seemed to have little in the way of food; when he rounded the Eastern Cape he found himself in a place with better "vittles", so it got the name "The Bay of Plenty." 

    I learned a lot more about the origins and migration of the Moari. The Maori remain a proud, regal, strong, clever, "warrior" people who used to battle fiercely, tribe against tribe. 

    Tonight we're in Wairoa, at Josie and Paul Mucalo's farm for red deer - 240 head on 130 acres of grass. They sell the antlers, mostly into the Asian market, once a year; after ten years, the deer become venison. We'll have some venison for dinner tomorrow evening. Today's photos are here; I'll add a few photos of red deer, and maybe the baby donkey named Hazel, tomorrow.

    Next post: Oh, deer me