E ono Ra

Tena Koutou, Tena Koutou, Ten Koutou Katoa...
Inaianei, Ka tuhi au i e ono te ra. Engari, Ka timata ahau ki te e-mail.

I think there are some problems with e-mail contact between my side and your side of the globe. It turns out some people didn't get any mail and others got the same mail twice. So, if you have the feeling you haven't heard from me in a while, please send me a mail so I know who did and did not hear from me. And if you've sent mail but didn't get a reply...I just found out that I haven't been receiving all my mail, so please let me know!

Matariki started yesterday, which is the celebration of Maori New Year. Matariki is the cluster of stars "we" call the Pleiades! I thought the Pleiades are visible in August, but come to think of it, that probably has to do with the northern and southern hemisphere?(I'm too blond to know this hihi)
And Inanahi (yesterday) I had a noho at the Marae again, for revision of the course. It was really fun. Yeah, never suspected studying to be fun..but it was. We were with 25 people or so and we could ask our teacher questions and stuff. We stayed for lunch, everyone brought something so we ended up having way too much food for all of us. We had rice, scones, pasta, pizza, pies, cookies, chips and so on! (Yes, really healthy..)

E ono Ra--> Tane Mahuta
On the sixth day, me and my mom went from the eastcoast to the westcoast, there are many forests on the westcoast, all protected by the DOC (department of Conservation). And one of them contains the giant Kauri Trees. Some of you may have heard of them. Believe me, the are HUGE! The largest is Tane Mahutu and he is a Maori God. According to legend he was the one who parted Papatuanuku (mother earth) and Ranginui (skyfather) from their embrace making space for their children to live. (the space between heaven and earth). So, Maori are children of the land, making them land themselves. That's why they call land and placenta both whenua.
But okay, enough of the mythology, back to the tree. Tane Mahutu is a very very big and old Kauri tree, he is about 60 meters high and has a girth of 17 meters. He is probably about 2000 years old, which would mean the tree was there when Christ walked the earth.

Further down the road there were more Giant Kauri's. The four sisters, and the second and seventh largest Kauri of the world (I don't remember their names) During our visit it was raining but that didn't really matter, it sort of suited the atmosphere in the forest--->rainforest...
this guy who took a photo for us turned out to be a Dutch guy who had been living in NZ for over 20 years, but he was still able to speak dutch! Always so funny when you meet people from holland (unless it are stuck up asshole dutch backpackers)

After visiting the Kauri trees we drove down to eum...Dargaville where we stayed the night...

Next episode: Auckland and Coromandel Peninsula :)