Te Puia, Māori Arts & Crafts Institute, with a side of Thermal Wonder

Geothermal Valley in Te Puia

This evening's fun started with a van ride to pick up other participants. Everyone was eager for our tour of Te Puia, and our driver was a hoot. There was a young woman from Chile with her Mom. The she translated for her Mom who was - like Ila and me - monolingual. We chatted with them on and off all night.

Arriving at the center our driver gave us the lo down on what we had to look forward to.

The map gives a good idea of the size of the facilities and its land

All started with a walking tour.  For a laugh, we were given a go at pronouncing the word on the sign below... For a second I thought we were in Wales, visiting Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

We visited the beautiful & exquisitely carved Maori food storage , and we were allowed to climb underneath to see where food was stored.

Loosely speaking, this is a Maori
Tupperware Container. Really!

Our guide was a wonderful young woman who has many relatives that also work and make art at the Maori Arts and Crafts Institute. There they work at indoctrinating their youth so the old arts and ways of producing art do not fall by the wayside.

Here our guide showed us her tattoos. One arm tatto tells her personal story, and the other shows her family's history.

There were several artists working on projects, and we viewed them from an overhead walkway.

A young artist, in his teens or early 20s, engraving a piece of art.

Traditional Maori clothing
made from wild flax

Wild New Zealand Flax, that is scraped and worked to make textiles.

I got a huge kick out of watching our guide's aunt demonstrating how to make their traditional flax into decorative strips, which are then used in traditional ware. It reminded me very much of how the California Maidu and Miwok work tule. Here's a quicky video of the demo.


And the other thing that thrilled me to pieces in a quirky way was this pair of stuffed birds. They are a male and female Huia birds. The females had long curved bills, but the males had straight bills. They had a beautiful song and went extinct due to loss of habitat, hunting them for their white-tipped black tail feathers for fashion and for the Maori chefs to wear. And as that wasn't bad enough, the species was a ground nester too, so when cats, rats, stoats, weasels and Australian Possums were imported their nests and nestlings were easy prey.

These birds were at the Arts & Crafts center and I thought the tour would mention them but didn't. It was amazing to see the pair, like seeing a stuffed passenger pigeon or a dodo.

We were walked down to the thermal area to look at the geysers and thermals by daylight. We would return again after our feast.

On the walk back from the thermal area we visited the Kiwi exhibit where one of the most iconic New Zealand birds snuck around in the dark trying its little best to keep up from seeing it. I am dead set on coming back some day to see one of New Zealand's Kiwi species in the wild.


We had a second guide, who was also a Maori of New Zealand. She was also quite nice and I loved hearing the accent. She chose a young man in the group to be our 'chef' and then taught us how we were to behave because we were to enter a genuine Maori meeting house, and if it was done incorrectly in a manner that insulted the Maori of the meeting house, we wouldn't be allowed in.

A daytime peek inside the Maori meeting
house prior to the evening's presentation

Another video, this one 2 mins also. The roasted Hāngi is removed from the underground oven, or umu (pronounced 'emu'). The last bit is what our guide told us was necessary for us to enter the Maori meeting house.  She had a very pretty & interesting accent.


The Hāngi we attended was marvelous. The food was great, nothing too exotic, meaning no Kiwi on the menu. There was plenty of food, plenty of time to eat it and chat. I can't believe I was so into the feast that I took not one photo at the Hāngi. That doesn't happen v. often, does it?

Back to the Maori meeting house. Fun! There is a video of the dances and singing. This final video, shows a nice variety of the wonderful presentations that were performed for us. At one point they asked for volunteers to dance, using 'poi', two white balls, held together by a long string. They are rhythmically swung in time to the music. Women volunteers were recruited to come up on stage and dance with poi. My lack of skill did not stop me from volunteering!  Ila filmed a bit of me screwing up on stage, which isn't included here, but that's Ok, there are plenty of knowledgeable dancers here doing themselves proud.


After all the dancing, and all the feasting, a tram drove us back down to the thermals. Along the way Ila and I chatted with our tour buds, the Chilean ladies. Lots of fun chatting with them. When we got to the thermal area we were offered a nice cup of hot chocolate, and not a one of the four of us had any room for even a sip of cocoa. Honestly, had I drunk a cup, there would have been a pretty messy and spontaneous thermal explosion, I can tell you!

The walkway along the thermal
path - the geysers were lit up

The rocks that are sat are always warm, from the
thermal activity beneath them. Kind of relaxing

The thermals of Te Puia are one of the world's great thermal wonders, which includes Yellowstone National Park and Hawaii's magnificent Kilauea. Made me wildly happy to think I've been lucky enough to visit them all. And I haven't even been blown up as yet so that's lucky.