Tamaki Maori cultural show and Hangi feast

We booked tickets to the Tamaki village. They pick you up at your hotel and take you to a visitors center in town for a brief introduction of Maori legend. On our tickets was a name of a tribe. Ours was Tui. That is the bus you ride. Each bus chooses a make leader to be chief and they are briefed on the opening ceremony. We also practice Maori phrases like: “Kia ora” (hello) and “ka Pai” (okay). The bus driver was hilarious.

Out at the village, the chiefs stand in front and Maori warriors do a trial dance as a challenge. When they drop a leaf in front of a chief, they pick it up and they have been accepted.

After the ceremony the Tamaki chief welcomes all to enter the village.

The chief is at the top.

We follow our chief from the bus into the village and stay together as a group. The chief can pick the people who will volunteer in the learning experiences. They were very informative and humorous.

Here we learned about wood carving and what they mean as well as the tattoos that they have. They used to be permanent but not as easy to integrate in society today. Tattoos originated with the Maori who went on to be indigenous people throughout the Pacific.
We learned about storytelling through dance and hand movement. These balls made sounds and they had very technical movements with them. Women were chosen to try their hand at it.
Flax is used to make baskets with the leaves and they showed how they step the outer lead off of the fiber inside.
We learned about games that taught hand eye coordination as well as moving of the hands and the arms to make them strong to handle weapons. People from our tribe were chosen to participate.
We are outside in the village and it was just beautiful.
They tried reaching all the men in our pretend village the haka dance. Pretty funny. The real dance is on video below.
Entertainment before dinner.
A love song about a separated couple.

We ate a Hangi dinner which was cooked under the ground usually but for us in steel bins on to of the hot Earth. It had a wood fired taste to the food and was delicious. They had lamb and chicken which I did not eat but also had mussels and fish. We also had pavlova and honey called for dessert.

On the way home the bus driver was hilarious singing songs like wheels on the bus… At one point he kept going around and around the round about while he sang!