The Integrative Stream

Northland Excursion

Yesterday we rented a Toyota Prius and drove 600 kilometers through the Northland. We took highway 1 from Auckland up to the Bay of Islands and Waitangi, and then highway 12 across to the east coast, where we saw the incredible harbor at Ononoie. The trip would have been over a lot sooner if we’d stopped stopping to take more pictures.

We may have had the only Prius in New Zealand. It wasn’t an intentional rental, but by the time we got to the Avis office it was all that they had left. Given gas prices, it wasn’t a bad car to have, and the utterly bizarre shifting and starting process actually made it easier to adjust to the fact that I was driving on the left hand side of the road, which I hadn’t done in over a year.

At Waitangi we visited the Busby House and the Treaty Grounds, where the treaty between the Maori and the British Government was signed in 1840. There’s a nice little museum in the house, along with a capacious gift shop in the visitor’s center, and a really big canoe. The video they show is informative but comical in its production values and general earnestness. They also advertise a Maori cultural show, which was a little lacking: eight people in a small theater. I first encountered the haka, or Maori war dance, watching a New Zealand All Blacks rugby match on TV in a bar in Southeast Asia. It was suitably impressive and intimidating. In this case, I learned that the haka doesn’t have to be intimidating at all, particularly if the dancers can’t keep a straight face. So we’ll have to do that part again.

On the way up we stopped in Waipu for “pie.” Whatever my life expectancy was yesterday morning, it’s less now.