Written by Jessica Schultz and Chris Angell

The first morning of the trip we finished packing and loaded up the vans.  Finally, we got on the road. The vans were packed full once everyone had arrived, which meant there was much noise as well as little space for sleeping on the four hour drive to our point of departure. The van drivers sped along the winding mountain roads to Whakahoro.

Once there, we performed our first powhiri, which is a welcoming ceremony for strangers to be allowed onto a Maori marae, a sort of “sacred front yard” to their land.  During a powhiri, the visitors introduce themselves to the hosts and the spirits of their ancestors.  Each group sings a song to release the tapu or “sacred energy” after a man gives a speech introducing the group and declaring their reason for having come to the marae. After a powhiri, each member of the groups lines up. The guests go through a line and perform a hongi, which is a sharing of thoughts and breath to welcome the strangers. This is done by pressing foreheads and noses, and taking a breath at the same time. After we ate dinner, we had a history lesson from Uncle Tūrama and met our guides, then went to bed.

The second day began with the rising of the sun and the blowing of putataras, or conch-shell bugles.  We arose and packed up our belongings.  Once breakfast was over, Mamah gave us a lesson in Aka, a Maori form of Tai Chi, and Ash distributed our “first and second best friends”: our lifejackets and paddles.  We piled into our six-person canoes, our wakas, each with one or two Maori guides.

This first leg of the river was the longest one of the trip.  Along the way, Uncle Tūrama gave another korero, explaining the historical significance of the Whanganui river to the local tribe.  We slowly got the hang of paddling in time together, but there was a lot of accidental splashing.  While we traveled, we operated on “river time”: we departed when everything was ready, and arrived when we reached our destination, without much regard for “watch time.”

Some time in the afternoon, we reached the second marae of our trip, called Mangapapapa.  After a delicious kai of Spaghetti Bolognese, we circled up and shared our “Good, Bad, and Ugly” of the day with everyone and went to bed.

We were woken on the third day via conches again. Before we left on the river, we performed a “reverse powhiri” to leave the marae. The day was bright and sunny, perfect for paddling. For lunch, we stopped at the Bridge to Nowhere. Though the Bridge was several hundred feet above the water, we could clearly see eels swimming through the clear water of the stream underneath. After lunch, all of the wakas stopped at a clay cave to explore a little. At this point, many of our group members and several guides went drifting down the river.

When we arrived at Tieke marae, we met up with Chris and the kids. Once all of our bags were up the hill from the beach, we performed our third powhiri, at which we were joined by a few other visiting families, whose men introduced themselves. At this point we were more familiar and comfortable with performing powhiris. After the powhiri, we met Auntie Wai and Shiloh, who were already at the marae. Dinner for the night was buttered chicken curry. Before the sun set, we had to carry a lot of wood from the beach up a hill so they could cook the next day’s dinner. Once all the work of the day was done, we had a Star Compass lesson given by our guide Cho, followed by possum hunting.

The fourth day was our rest day, sort of.  There was no canoeing, but we had plenty of work to do.  That night, we would be eating a Hangi, food steamed over hot rocks in a hole in the ground.  It was essentially the Maori version of a clam bake.  We washed and chopped vegetables together.  Most of our time was spent learning a new song and dance in Maori for the upcoming powhiri.

When you are welcomed onto a marae, you become a host, so we welcomed a group of about 40 tourists onto the marae.  It was a huge honor, which Uncle Turama said was unprecedented for a group like us.  Auntie Wai taught five of our women the Calls, called karanga, to perform during the powhiri while everyone else sang.  Each call has a particular function in the ritual and has to be done in one breath.  It was nerve-wracking but exhilarating to take on this role for Tieke marae.

That night we finally tasted the hangi, which had been cooking nearly all day.  Steamed chicken, pork, and mutton, as well as carrots, potatoes and kumara, white sweet potatoes.  It was amazing.  We finished off the night with Good, Bad and Ugly, and some singing on the porch.of the house on the Marae.

On the fifth day, the morning was spent packing to leave, and we had to make sure nothing was left behind. Auntie Wai and Dylan, another member of our guides’ extended family, accompanied us on our final trip down the river, which was also one of the more difficult sections to canoe down. We faced rapids at several different points. At the second rapid one of the canoes filled with water and its bags floated down the stream. The other canoes grabbed what we could, but mostly we picked up things as we passed them on the way out. One of the canoers in the submerged canoe lost a sandal, which was retrieved farther down the river later in the day.

All of the canoes stopped together once for the sole purpose of swimming down one of the rapids. Groups of us made chains by linking legs under armpits as we went through the crashing water, and some of us even tried to film the trip through the rapids.

Once we said our goodbyes to the river and our guides, we headed back to the Settlement. One of the guides, Hemi, joined us on our trip back. Dinner when we got to the Settlement was fish and chips, which now seems to be a staple after-trip meal. We did one final “Good-Bad-Ugly” before we were done with the trip.

We want to thank Auntie Wai, Auntie Di, Uncle Tūrama, Hemi, Te Riaki, Ra, Cho, Uncle Tona, Mamah, Ash, Reina, Shiloh, Dylan, and everyone else who joined us on our trip!