Te Papa

The Cable Car, Wellington, New Zealand

Wellington, New Zealand’s capital, is the country’s third largest city with about 200000 inhabitants. It’s a quaint place in accord with the rest of the country. We came here less for exploring a New Zealand city but to visit its fascinating museum Te Papa, the National Museum of New Zealand.

Botanical garden, Wellington, New Zealand

But as long as we were here we took the cable car and viewed the city and its harbor from above. From the Kelbum suburb we descended the hill through the Botanical Garden where we witness how crews were felling a gigantic dry tree, removed piece by piece by … helicopter. They were cutting one piece, anchor it, the chopper would lift it and dispose it a bit further down. As the garden attendants were saying, this would chew a big chunk of the yearly tree budget.

Parliament, Wellington, New Zealand

The New Zealand’s Parliament can be easily visited by a tour or simply you can walk to the gallery and watch the ongoing session debates session. But it took quite a while to grasp the kiwi accent…

Wellington Harbor, New Zealand

Te Papa offers a great first lesson in Aotearoa culture. The Maori name of New Zealand seems to stem from the first word that was pronounced when the first migrants saw the island while sailing in the Pacific. It appeared to them as a “long cloud” – Aotearoa.

Te Papa, The National Museum of New Zealand in Wellington

The first settlers of the land we know today as New Zealand migrated from Polynesia and became the Māori. The lineage of these ancestors traces back 5,000 years to indigenous peoples in Taiwan. From there, Polynesian people dispersed across a vast area, including Tonga, Samoa, Tahiti, Hawaiʻi, Easter Island (Rapa Nui), and eventually New Zealand.

Credit: Wikipedia

It is not known precisely when Maori settled in Aotearoa but the Maori oral tradition mentions a grand migration between 1320 and 1350 that originated in Hawaiki, that is associated with Tahiti. In the Māori mythology, Hawaiki has its special place. It is known as the realm where Io, the supreme being, shaped the world and its first inhabitants but also it represents the ultimate destination of each individual soul after death.

Food House in Te Papa, The National Museum of New Zealand in Wellington

Some researchers mention of a possible early Māori settlement in the north island between AD 1250 and AD 1275. In any case it is known that in 1315 Mount Tarawera viciously erupted changing the landscape of the north island. The main settlement period is believed to have occurred in the decades after the Tarawera eruption. There are also speculations that Maori seafarers have been the first humans to discover Antarctica.

The giant of Akaroa

Akaroa Harbor, Banks Peninsula, New Zealand

In Polynesian folklore, the figure of Maui holds significant prominence.. Either as a folk hero who brought fire to the world, the one capable to slow the sun, or as a demigod Maui represents a central figure in the entire Pacific Polynesian culture. In the southern island of New Zealand the legend says that Māui cast a colossal giant into the ocean and buried him beneath a mountain on Banks Peninsula.

Banks Peninsula, New Zealand

After an entire winter while the giant lay dormant, as summer approached, he woke up from his slumber and started to stir, causing the land to crack and form Akaroa Harbour. Trying to restrain him, Māui continued to heap earth atop him but the giant would awaken every summer creating new lakes and bays in the peninsula. I drove the road from Christchurch airport through the middle of this turbulent peninsula in this otherworldly landscape towards Akaroa till the clouds and dusk veiled the land in a bluish hue.

Christchurch, New Zealand

Maybe the giant still stirs under the ground causing the powerful tremors that affect Banks peninsula, a very earthquake prone area of Southern island of New Zealand. The 2011 Christchurch earthquake’s signs still scar the city. Its newly built center is all steel and glass, modern and minimalist, lifted from the dream of an architect that could design unhindered by an inexistent old. Some tall buildings, chipped and cracked, are still waiting to be demolished and a new cathedral is still in the process of being rebuilt. Meanwhile I was able to find a stretch of lower old houses full of cafes and restaurants saved somehow from the giant’s wrath that still offers a whiff of the old times .

Otakaro/Avon River, Christchurch, New Zealand