Sabbatical V: Heading South, and North

Sunday, May 19.  Rested, somewhat, so time to move on.  I have already realized, all over again, that in a new and interesting place like New Zealand, there are just too many intriguing choices of what to do.  I trust fate, weather, fatigue, and ongoing research that I will see enough.  In this mood, I started my journey with a short drive to Te Mata Peak, a local land trust park in Havelock North, which had a set of recommended hikes.  It was busy, clearly a popular Sunday outing.  I took the Giant Circuit, about 6 km of trail with significant elevation gain to top of Te Mata.  My knee hated the downhills, but no more than usual.  Lovely as usual to be out in the real world:

I think this part of Hawkes Bay, and southeast New Zealand overall, is mostly forearc basin geology, meaning it’s all semiparallel mountains and ridges that are being bulldozed up in front of the volcanoes that have formed along this convergent plate boundary - scraped off the subducting plate.  Te Mata Peak is an example – my track wandered along the gentler northwest face at first, including through a sequoia grove, and then ascended to the ridge crest along the “Chutes and Ladders”.  Suddenly I was at a 370 meter cliff, and it was hyperwindy.  I had trouble staying upright.  This is a hang-gliding venue, but today was too blustery.  Dramatic views towards the Pacific:

Moving further on, heading south on Route 2.  A bit more used to MG, as I get acclimated to road behavior.  The squirrels, I mean engine, seem happiest at 95 kph or less on this kind of windy lumpy surface.  Through Waipawa, Waipukaru, Norsewood, Dannevirke (Scandinavians immigrated to the area in the 19^th century to cut timber), Woodville. Rain squalls on and off, so it was a good time to be driving. 

At Woodville, a turn onto Route 3, and northwest across the Ruahine Range (forearc plus transpression?). Coming on sunset.  Winding road.  Wind turbines by the dozen.  Into Ashhurst, where my amazing camping app recommended the Ashhurst Domain, i.e., park.  A small nest of campers in an isolated, quiet corner by a cemetery.  A good space for MG. 

Monday May 20 – First, a view of the wind farm:

A short drive to Palmerston North, home of the New Zealand Rugby Museum.  I have been an All Blacks fan since seeing them play South Africa in 1996.  I still don’t fully grasp rugby rules, but I know beautiful play when I see it. First though, Sengita had figured out that I could stand in front of a webcam in the Town Square, so I achieved a hello wave to North America.  

The Rugby Museum is part of the Te Manawata Museum complex, so before looking at jerseys and balls, I learned a bit more about the Maori (the Rangitane iwi) and European cultural histories of the Manatawa region.  The Rugby Museum was fine.  The history of rugby, starting with its origins at Rugby School in south England, and then a decade-scale tour of All Blacks history.  They have been very good for a long time.  The displays were chock full of original artifacts, ranging from jerseys to balls to sheep bladders (early ball inflators) to team caps.  The main information foci were on how well the All Blacks played, primarily against England and South Africa, and the evolution of the game in Kiwi society.  All Blacks teams were integrated from the first side in 1905.  Women’s teams developed early on.  Almost all players fought in the World Wars.  The protests and drama around games against South Africa during the apartheid era were covered honestly.  And again, the sense of national identity was clear.  It would be as if the USA Olympics Men’s Basketball “Dream Team” played together against other countries all the time.  Here are a few pix - the displays show items from the 2010s, 1910s and 1970s (sorry for the random order).

Decision point.  Northwest toward Taranaki (hiking), or south to a day in Wellington (museums).  Wellington won.  When else am I going to be here?  So back on the road, through Shannon, Otau, Otaki, and finally Paekakariki.

Camp, and a walk on the beach till sunset over the Tasman Sea:

Tuesday, May 21 – Another walk on the beach before dawn.  Breakfast and then down to Wellington.  I am still sorting out Kiwi traffic.  Leaving Paekakariki, there was a line of cars in the left turn lane to get on Route 1.  It didn’t move.  I began to suspect something was off then the driver in front of me got out of her car and when to get espresso.  OK, it was a parking lane.  In the middle of the street. 

I was twitchy about driving MG into an urban setting – too much to keep track of while driving.  At least it was hard to get lost; Route 1 is the only main road into the city from the northwest.  Gripping the wheel tightly, I easily found Aotearoa Quay Road, and hence my destination, The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, aka, “Te Papa.  I parked MG in the campervan ghetto:

The museum is a six story modern pile of natural history, social history, and art.  I’ll let the pictures explain how well-designed it is:

 

Panorama of Wellington, Te Papa on the left

I took a quick spin through the geology and biology sections, which were full of moms and small children who were having a grand time banging on all the interactive exhibits or trying to moderate such behavior.  Noisy, but at least I saw the kiwis (chicken-scale) and the embalmed giant squid:

A very good section on human impacts of the natural environment. Based on palynological studies, pre-human New Zealand was 85% forest.  The Maori dropped this to 55%, clearing land for gardens.  Europeans then “made the land useful” by felling trees, draining swamps, burning native bush and introducing grasses and livestock.  Only 25% of the original forest remains.  Based on maps, protected land is mostly what’s too steep or frozen to “use”.  This is changing; like in the USA, as I see in my work at TWS, there’s blooming awareness of the need to conserve a full a spectrum of ecosystems, especially given climate change.

Upwards to the floors on social history.  I particularly wanted to see the Maori section.  This was the only part of the museum where photography was not allowed, as most of the artifacts continue to have living cultural importance.  The exhibits told the story of the Rangowhataata people: their origin myths; arrival on North Island; contact with European; disenfranchisement from their lands and traditions; modern resolution.  It was clear the Maori strive to maintain their culture, and have been participants in national culture, albeit too much as second class citizens.  But not pushed to the side to the great degree that Native American peoples have experienced (except maybe the Hopi, Zuni, and some of the Inuit groups?).  All that said, what moved me to tears was the power of the artifacts – I can’t explain why.  They had living power.  As an example, one of Te Papa’s meeting rooms featured an example of a modern Maori meeting house, maybe it gives a sense of what I felt:

Espresso, and onto the art section, which was – mostly closed.  I did enjoy a series of amusing sculptures (?) made from paint by Helen Calder, for example:

That was the morning.  Wellington has other museums, a botanical garden, a cable car, always of which sounded good and were in my plan.  But with a strong push from Sengita, and realizing that this was a unique opportunity, I decided to go on the Weta Cave tour.  Weta Studios is one of the movie production companies in “Wellywood” - that does special effects – think Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, the Chronicles of Narnia, Avatar, King Kong, District 9, and about 200 other films.  Trust me, you’ve seen their work.  I took a tour bus from downtown.  Ray, the driver, was an extra in LOTR and delighted in pointing out the park where 19 scenes from LOTR were shot, as well as all the studio buildings – mostly nondescript warehouses - which have intergrown organically into the suburb of Miramar, oh, that building is the biggest green screen set in the world… etc. 

The Weta tour was – OMG, the real stuff – orc costumes, dwarf armor, weapons of every type and size (I got to swing a dwarf mace and Prince Caspian’s sword), etc. ad infinitum. Examples, mostly from LOTR:

Bex, our Weta guide, walked us through the whole design process conceptualization, prototyping, mass production - using a dwarf helmet as an example.  Weta have invented and built many of the machines and materials that this requires.  The final highlight was meeting Warren Beaton, who is one of Weta’s master craftsmen.  He is the guy who built that gooey womb like thing that orcs were born out in LOTR.  He invented a polymer modeling material which you can read about here.

When we met him, he was building a model out of cooking foil and cardboard for the Weta miniatures display.  He kept saying, oh you can do this at home.

Back to MG, and time to escape Wellington.  It was the start of rush hour.  Some portion of Wellington’s 200,000 residents were all trying to commute on the same two lane (and randomly four lane) Route 1 as was I.  It got tiring very fast. And dark.  I got as far north as where I had started in Paekakariki, and ran up the white flag, booking another night in the same campground.  I was amped up from the drive and the day, so I burned off some energy by going for a run on the beach after sunset.  This was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done in the dark.  It was just past low tide, so the beach was flat and hard-packed.  There was just enough moonlight to be able to dodge driftwood and stay out of the ocean.  I thought, this is one run where it would be impossible to get lost – you either run into the water on one side, or a wall of sand of the other. 

Wednesday, May 22 – Atonement for a run on the beach and adequate rest was a long driving day.  I wanted to get well north into Taranki to be staged for hiking tomorrow.  So I got up, quick breakfast, quick wash, and – it started raining.  Back on Route 1.  It’s good MG is a bit loud, I can’t hear the windshield wipers.  I drove through squalls for a couple hours – Levin, Foxton, Bulls, Tarakini.

Foxton Windmill - Built in 2005

Eventually Whanganui, a major town near the mouth of the Whanganui River.  A destination as my guide book said it had a great regional museum.  You may have noticed I cannot resist a good museum.  Leaving MG by the river, I wondered around and eventually found the museum.  Yes, two floors of “Whangi” history.  I learned two things.  First, the moa, NZ’s extinct giant flightless bird, was REALLY BIG.  Approaching Clydesdale-scale.  The Maori ate them to extinction. There are several major fossil sites in the area, hence the paleontology in this museum. The first British naturalists reconstructed moa skeletons with long upright necks, so they looked like humongous ostriches (they are in the same taxonomic group).  Much more recently, biologists realized that any giant flightless bird with such an upright posture would continually be clotheslining itself.  So they looked at moa neck bones, and the vertebral alignment indicates that they carried their heads forward, not up.  Science wins again (there’s currently a stupid auto insurance commercial on in the USA, which has an emu in it – imagine that bird, just four times bigger). 

Second, an excellent exhibit on the local Maori.  In contrast to Te Papa, this museum gave me a good understanding of how the Maori lived – farming, fishing, warfare, weaving, carving, and sea faring.  Although a different group to the spiritual story at Te Papa, this filled in a lot of gaps in my understanding.  The Maori were a thriving culture before being disrupted by Europeans.  I don’t know how much of this reflects their roots in Polynesia, but no doubt much of it is unique to this land, Te Aotearoa.  It’s also clear that they had the will and the spirit to acculturate with the Europeans and still persistently fight for their culture.  Witness the Maori players on the All Blacks since conception.

Downtown Whanganui

Further north, no rain, just clouds. Kai Iwi, Waverley, Kakarmea, and a turn north at Hawera.  I’ve ended the night in Stratford, which has a serious Shakespeare theme going down.  Tomorrow to Mt. Taranaki, a 2518 m, beautifully symmetrical volcanic peak.  The summit is frozen, so some short hikes on the margins will have to do.  

Mt. Taranaki from Stratford