Christchurch, New Zealand
This place is awesome!
We just arrived in Christchurch, located on the south island. Last week we were on the north island, starting in Auckland. We've been touring the countryside, looking at a lot of sheep! It really is beautiful here and very green. We had an opportunity to check out some Maori culture -- the Maori are the semi-indigenous people here. They originally came from Polynesia just like the Hawaiians. Anyway, it turns out they used to eat people. So you can imagine our relief when we were shown the dinner being prepared and found chicken and potatoes on the menu. The traditional tattoo process for Maoris involved three chisels -- one to open the skin, another to keep it open a week later and then a third chisel applied the ink after that. The ancient Maori men had tattoos all over their faces, butts and legs. The women had tattoos on their lips and chin. Very interesting but not quite interesting enough to convince us to do it. We do still have two weeks here so who knows how that will turn out.
We had a fun group of people on our first tour -- 12 of us plus two kiwi guides. There were really nice people and we all got along really well. We were all Americans except for one Aussie woman. The Texans in the group delighted in telling her Texan phrases like, "Y'all, my dogs are barkin'" which, loosely translated, means "my feet hurt." The two Texans will be on our trip on the south island, I think. One of our guides is a police officer in the non-tourist season. The other guide works in Japan managing a bungy company the other half of the year. The bungy jumper is part Maori and has qutie a few tattoos i\on his arms representing traditional Maori gods, etc.
Our next tour starts tomorrow -- it is a two week tour through the south island. I think our first night's room is at a sheep farm. We were going to be kayaking a bit more now that we are south. Apparently the south island is where the real nature stuff starts.
We just arrived in Christchurch, located on the south island. Last week we were on the north island, starting in Auckland. We've been touring the countryside, looking at a lot of sheep! It really is beautiful here and very green. We had an opportunity to check out some Maori culture -- the Maori are the semi-indigenous people here. They originally came from Polynesia just like the Hawaiians. Anyway, it turns out they used to eat people. So you can imagine our relief when we were shown the dinner being prepared and found chicken and potatoes on the menu. The traditional tattoo process for Maoris involved three chisels -- one to open the skin, another to keep it open a week later and then a third chisel applied the ink after that. The ancient Maori men had tattoos all over their faces, butts and legs. The women had tattoos on their lips and chin. Very interesting but not quite interesting enough to convince us to do it. We do still have two weeks here so who knows how that will turn out.
We had a fun group of people on our first tour -- 12 of us plus two kiwi guides. There were really nice people and we all got along really well. We were all Americans except for one Aussie woman. The Texans in the group delighted in telling her Texan phrases like, "Y'all, my dogs are barkin'" which, loosely translated, means "my feet hurt." The two Texans will be on our trip on the south island, I think. One of our guides is a police officer in the non-tourist season. The other guide works in Japan managing a bungy company the other half of the year. The bungy jumper is part Maori and has qutie a few tattoos i\on his arms representing traditional Maori gods, etc.
Our next tour starts tomorrow -- it is a two week tour through the south island. I think our first night's room is at a sheep farm. We were going to be kayaking a bit more now that we are south. Apparently the south island is where the real nature stuff starts.
