Kauri trees and a Maori Waitangi Tour

Today, Wednesday, was the first day of traveling with the tour bus that will be driving us around for the next 18 days.  There are 28 travelers on our bus.  The others are from Australia, England, Holland, and Scotland. We rode north from Auckland, seeing and learning about some things that were completely new to us.

Our ride for the next almost-3 weeks

                                                 
Many, many years ago, New Zealand was completely covered with an amazing tree called a kauri.  It's New Zealand's version of a California redwood or a sequoia.  They can grow for several thousand years, they're amazingly huge in diameter, the wood is almost completely without knots, and their sap was useful for many products.  For these reasons, and because there were millions of them here, the people used and harvested them.  Now, there are only a few left in the whole country.  They're so precious, the individual trees are actually named.  We stopped at Parry Kauri Park to see a magnificent tree.  We then went to a Kauri Museum, and were impressed by the size of the museum and the exhibits that are there.  The furniture that has been made with that wood is beautiful.

Beautiful kaori tree

Further north, to the Bay of Islands, we've stopped in Paihai for the night.  In Paihai is the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, the location of the signing of the treaty between the Maori tribes and the British, in 1840.  The Maori are the indigenous Polynesian people of NZ, and about 15% of the population of NZ are Maori.  A lovely Maori woman gave us a tour of their Treaty House or Peace House.  Covering all the walls and ceiling are beautiful carvings and woven panels.  She sang a haunting song in the Maori language.

Waitangi Treaty House in Bay of Islands

Speaking of the Maori language, it's interesting to see that the vast majority of place names in NZ are Maori words--cities, streets, harbors, plants.  I'm a word person, so I'm having fun listening to the sounds of all those words.  Also, by the way, the Maori language is taught in school to all NZ children.

It's very common in NZ to see signs in both English and Maori