Day 87: Rotarua, NZ Part II (April 4, 2011)

Last night I went to a local Maori show, followed by a trip to a nature preserve to see the nocturnal kiwi bird.  We saw three kiwis and they are pretty funny.  Technically they are classified as birds but they could also be mammals (for example, they have belly buttons!).  We couldn't take any photos because it freaks them out, but they were very cute.  They don't fly, the just scuttle around the ground.  They don't really move like birds, either.  More like, I dunno, some find of rodent.  Sadly, they are endangered birds and in the South Island, are on the verge of extinction.  The birds in the north can lay several eggs each year, but the southern ones lay only one or two.  And foreign animals that were introduced to the islands in the 19th Century have killed, and continue to kill, a lot of them.  Plus, the animals that were later brought in to kill those predators also eat the kiwis (duh!).

The Maori show was pretty cool, although the dinner included with it wasn't that great.  And it was mostly english food, not Maori, other than some sweet potatoes, which were yucky.  /yuck face/  But the show was worth seeing.  The performers told us that they live like westerners now, but respect their Maori heritage so they work to keep it alive through rituals and shows.

So we saw some of the war dances, their social dances, fighting techniques, etc.  And got an explanation of how the Maori used to live and what their face tatoos mean.  Basically, the men are tatooed with 4 different "birds" -- the owl, kiwi, parrot and bat.  And the women are tattooed with the owl.

I struck up a friendship with another single traveler who was at the show, Christina from Germany.  She thinks that the european New Zealanders have always treated the Maori fairly decently and with a fair amount of respect (at least compared to some other colonizers, like Australia) and in turn, the Maori take a lot of pride in their culture.  I suspect she's right.  New Zealanders generally have adopted at least some of the Maori traditions (or at least honor them), like the All Blacks rugby team, which does this war dance before each match.  (Thanks to Ken for the link.) 

Oh, and the weirdest part of last night's show was the entertainment during dinner.  It was a native New Zealander of Maori descent.  He played the guitar and the saxaphone accompanied by one of those machines from the 1970s that plays easy listening beats in the background.  And his selection was mostly american country western (Willie Nelson was a big favorite of his) and old american standards.  Christina suggested he was going for a Hawaiian sound, which made a little sense, since Maori music is related to other pacific islander groups.

He's even wearing his cowboy hat.