Dec 24, 2013 Northland IV: Paihia (day 2)

I spent my last day visiting the Waitangi Treaty grounds, which I reached on a rental bike since it was a few kilometers away from my hostel. The Waitangi Treaty was an important document in NZ history, and I enjoyed learning about it on the site where it had been written and first signed. Pictures here.

**If you think history is boring, skip to the next bit of red.**

Created in February 1840, it codified the rights and processes of trade, land possession, and law in NZ, particularly when it came to interactions between the indigenous Maoris and the newly-arrived English colonists (who were a rather rowdy bunch). The treaty officially sealed an agreement between the English inhabitants who remained under the sovereign British crown and the unified confederation of Maori chiefs throughout the country. However, as is common throughout European colonialism, there were a few discrepancies between the two copies of the treaty—the chiefs signed the one “translated” into Te Reo Maori and the handful of British authorities signed one in English—however, it still served as a strong and mostly peaceful document to bridge the two cultures. Thus, it is recognized as the document that made New Zealand a nation. Don’t you think people who don’t appreciate history are short-sighted and ignorant?

 
 
The Treaty Grounds contain a small visitor center and the handful of sites and objects important to the treaty’s creation or built to commemorate it. This includes the world’s longest ceremonial war canoe, which was built to celebrate the centennial Waitangi Day and holds 120 people at once (and requires 80 to sail). The building where the treaty was written and revised—the home of the English leader at the time—has been preserved, including life-size figures of him and his family, which I found a bit unsettling. There is also a ceremonial waka (a Maori house), which is unique in that it was built to represent all Maori, whereas a waka typically only represents a single tribe. Finally, the Flagpole standing on the lawn resembles a ship’s mast and flies a flag for both the Maori and the English, above which unfurls the NZ flag.

 **Whew, you made it! Now for more vacation bits.**

My final activity for the trip was what I suppose every other visitor to Paihia did first: I spent an hour on the beach in a bathing suit. While certainly a relaxing activity—and heck, probably the only time I’ll be on a beach for Christmas Eve—an hour was all my fair skin needed.

I returned home on an afternoon-long bus ride, and I savored my last moments riding through Northland. I thought about all the places I’d been, and how that’s probably the only time in my life I’ll ever get to go there; how beautiful they were, and asking myself how they felt and tasted and what they sounded like, so that I won’t just have photos to take home from this trip. I thought about the amazing, fascinating, kind-hearted people I’d met and really talked with, and how I might never have encountered them and realized there were such marvelous individuals in this world if I hadn’t gotten the guts to travel on my own. Finally, even though there were times when something happened and I thought, “I wish I had someone to share this with,” there were far more moments when I thought, “I never knew I was capable of this.” Those moments made this one of the most fulfilling trips I have ever taken in my life, because, dang it, it really is the journey, not the destination.