29th October 2009
This morning we made the short walk from Parnell to the Auckland museum, about 15 minutes away. This museum houses a large number of Maori items, as well as having a Maori Cultural Show several times a day, which we purchased ticket for.
We were summoned through to the main Maori exhibition by people dressed in traditional Marori attire where we were given a brief introduction and then led through to a small auditorium with a stage.
There were six performers, one of whom was playing the guitar, and for the next half an hour they demonstrated traditional Maori music, song and dance, games, and weaponry. The show finished with a Haka, which included the women, so not quite what you see on the rugby pitch!
Afterwards the performers led us back out to the main exhibition hall where they posed for pictures and were available for answering any questions that anyone had.
It was a good show and worth the money. I guess the location was a bit “clinical” being inside a museum, but we hope to catch another similar show later in our trip at Rotorua, which should also include some of the traditional food cooked in the ground.
After the show we spent the next few hours wandering around the rest of the museum. Whilst it’s not the biggest museum, there’s certainly plenty packed into it, including a good exhibition about volcanos - a somewhat relevant topic in New Zealand, and Auckland in particular, which is built on top of 50 volcanos, not all of which are extinct. One of the features of this particular exhibit was a mock-up of a house in Auckland overlooking the Bay. You go into the house and are presented with a demonstration of what it would be like to be in that house if a volcano was to erupt in the Bay. Not really somewhere you would want to be if that were to happen.
Also housed within the museum is a war memorial featuring the names of those lost in the many wars.
This evening we went out to meet Trystan for coffee, he’s from back home in Wales and his dad knows Claire’s dad, he’s been out here for 11 years and was able to give us some useful info on where to go and how to get there.
On our way back from coffee with Trystan we stumbled across a live band playing in one of the pubs not far from the hostel, they were playing Coldplay as we passed, so we went in and grabbed a beer. They played a good range of stuff including Sterophonics and Snowpatrol. A great way to end a fab evening.