A Napier, A city on the east coast of the northern island of New Zealand, No one is going, Or almost no one. Because Napier has no sulphuric water lakes, No uncontrolled rivers, nor hobbies houses, No Maori villas, No narrow paths, No snowy peaks. Yet, In effectively lacking all that, We loved Napier. The, specifying, We loved Napier on a route through a country, Its two islands, in which the other spreads before your eyes without rest and Napier offers a singular alternative. Can beauty be monotonous?
NZ is the constant travel by a harmonious and spectacular nature. It only has one defect, in my opinion, And it is too perfect. I do not say it with irony, I think it's a slight defect. His landscape is dazzling, But maybe a tuo too tamed. All roads, even those who climb mountains and volcanoes, They are perfectly marked, In an imposing state of conservation, full of posters that resolve doubts that you do not have. And nothing never assaults you, You enjoy everything with simplicity, And it surprises you in many places that something done by the chance of a clash of atoms can be so harmonious. And it is, But I to the country, personal taste, "disheveled" a little.
We started the route in Auckland a 26 December 2024. There, at the airport, We rent our car. There were no caravans. We had to understand that this was a signal. I recommend not traveling, If they prefer to avoid crowds, in what are your summer vacation. It's high season there. The country was full of premises going to the beaches and mountains, and Chinese, Indians, japanese, Koreans, Australians…
After digging more than a meter deep in low tide, Natural thermal pools appear in front of the ocean.
We headed the next morning with the car along a beautiful coast route to Coromandel, And from there we go to Cathedral Cove and Hot Water Beach, two sandy chisels. The second is famous because there are hundreds of people with shovels to dig in the sand to make a very hot mineral water bathtub. After digging more than a meter deep in low tide, a thermal spa appears in front of the ocean. The tide retired when it dusk. It was fun to feel suddenly burn his feet. We thought we would be alone. We think badly. The empty nz of those who spoke to us do not find it all over the trip.
That made prices higher and that, even, Some visits in animal parks could not be done for not having reserved previously. Something I think is being done wrong when to enjoy the show of wild penguins you have to book a seat in advance to contemplate them sitting in an amphitheater. The travel industry must be rethink in the antipodes, In the Greek islands or in the Jordanian desert.
Everything is so far from these islands that even the restless sapiens arrived here when they already called them humans.
But we are thinking just those things, And we pay it. We decided at the last moment the trip. We now live in Bangkok, And from Bangkok Nz is close. Are just, counting the scale in Sydney, 15 travel time. Not bad, From Europe they would be more than 24. Everything is so far from these islands that Even the restless sapiens arrived here when they already called them humans. All are foreign here.
The extermination of the tsiraignas
You learn that quickly. The road is a strange cemetery. We began to see dozens of bodies of what seemed like a giant rodent. Pieces of meat, Sometimes torn apart, Flunts covered on asphalt. It is a marsupial, La Zarigüeya, opposum in English. His story is singular. There is a government plan to end them before 2050. His crime? Be an immigrant that bothers the other local species.
New Zealand, separated from the rest of continents makes 85 million years, created a unique ecosystem in which there were no land mammals. Only bats inhabited these two islands. La Zarigüeya wine de Australia en 1837. They introduced them to implement a then lucrative industry with their skins. Soon the animal, Before the absolute lack of predators, began to multiply and generate environmental problems. In the early twentieth century, The debate about what to do with this invasive species began.
But the sapiens decided to preserve what they like best, The pocket, And he chose to do nothing. a century later, The marsupial has put multiple native species of birds against the strings of which the eggs are eaten. It is also a disease transmission vector in cattle. Government and conservation associations have decided to exterminate it in 20 years. It is calculated that they must end 30 Millones of the OPOSSUM (I get there 80 million).
For a conservationist is not an ethical dilemma to end one species to protect another?
For a conservationist is not an ethical dilemma to end one species to protect another?, I asked remembering the similar dilemma that a book I read years ago, "Ender the Xenocida", de Orson Scott Card, in which the protagonist must decide whether to end a virus, La cool, of which he discovers that it is an intelligent species that threatens to end the life of other species, including humans.
"Actually, The not ethical is doing nothing. Wheel, armiños, Comadrejas, Zarigüeyas, cats and ferrets have been introduced by man in the native landscape. If nothing is done to protect the birds, bats, New Zealand lizards and insects, They will extinguish, As has already happened with many of them, which makes the New Zealand context radically different from other countries ”, David Lewis explained to me, Organization Member Predator Free NZ.
It's funny, La Zarigüeya, who took her there to trade with her skins, It is protected from 1975 in what was his country of origin, Australia, Where to disappear. The debate seemed interesting to humans.
If nothing is done to protect the birds, bats, New Zealand lizards and insects, They will extinguish, As has already happened with many of them
Rotorua, A mandatory stop of the North Island to see the spectacular Wai or Tapu and the Waimangu Volcanic Valley, It is also a kind of capital of the Maori.
There are several of its villages that can be visited. Chatting with them, They tell you how they came from the Polynesian Islands around the thirteenth century to empty lands of men. Then, The first European to arrive was the Dutch Abel Tasman in 1642. And behind them, The famous Captain Cook appeared in 1769. After that, The British occupied the island and after fighting with the Maori. A kind of capitulation of the Maori who accepted, The British say, Submit to the English crown in exchange for protection and enjoy a land reserve. The Maori still deny that interpretation today, also signed by different Maori groups since they were not unified, And they talk that what they accepted is the British presence on the islands but without undergoing their laws and maintaining their autonomy.
The British roller passed them over their God and their laws. The Maori suffer today in each social and economic scale that is studied. According to International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs statistics, «The gap between Maori and not Maori is generalized: The life expectancy of the Maori is the 7 a 7,4 years younger than that of the non -Maori; His average income is the 71% of the pakeh? (New Zealand Europeans); the 25,5% De Los Maoríes abandon high school superior without qualifications and more of the 50% of the prison population is Maorí ».
"For five generations they did not let us learn our language, until in the decades of the 70 The tribes gathered to return our language to our schools ", Chief told me…
"For five generations they did not let us learn our language, until in the decades of the 70 The tribes gathered to return our language to our schools ", Chief told me, This was called, The effectively head of the Whakarewarewa Villa in Rotorua. “We were removed land, They prevented us from vote ... ", He counted.
And I listened and thought about the opposition. Its extermination is justified that it is an invasive species that damages native species like kiwi, The fragile bird unable to fly nz symbol. Zarigüeyas and Kiwis? Europeans and Maori?
For five generations they did not let us learn our language, until in the decades of the 70 The tribes gathered to return our language to our schools
The difference, perhaps, is No human is originally from NZ, But some arrived before others and populated an empty land, and somehow they are considered more original people and with greater rights of possessing these lands. Are they?
Beautiful time, and Napier
Back rotorua, We deviate ourselves to the east. Almost all the routes go down to Taupo and they close there they make the most famous trekking in the country, el Tongariro Alpine Crossing. We had read that the path of 19 kilometers was crowded with tourists And we wanted to do something that was out of the route. We read something from an Art Deco city, where we could also make some good wine tastings. And we like wine, And we liked visiting a city so as not to always be only in the countryside, and, especially, We wanted to stay in a less visited place. And it turns out that we loved its calm.
Napier is a jewel, A small city in its historic center stopped in time. Before the arrival of Europeans, Dominaba ESA Zona La Tribu Maorí de Los ngati Kahungunu. Captain Cook passed with his ships in front of that coast in 1769 And he wrote in his blog that “on each side of this promontory there is a low and narrow beach of sand or stone. Among these beaches and land firm there is a rather large lake of salt water, i guess".
The town was completely rebuilt and made under the influence of Art Deco. And that is the Napier that is visited today.
It was not until 1854 that the English were established in that area. He was baptized as Napier for Sir Charles Napier, a British commander in India hero of the battle of Meeanee. Soon a troop of farmers arrived, workers, Fishermen ... who began to lift a new commercial city.
But, in 1931 A very strong earthquake almost completely destroyed the city and killed 162 People. The town was completely rebuilt and made under the influence of Art Deco. And that is the Napier that is visited today. It is a trip to the past, in which everything has a careful air in which You expect a piece of charleston to play from a gramophone, and women and men go out to dance to the track with their dresses and costumes of the years 20 While smoke cigarettes with long nozzles. There are several stores that look like relic museums where to buy clothes, objects, discs and souvenirs of those times.
Walking through the Historic Center is to do it through a collection of buildings with its carved facades and its high stained glass windows. The beach is a very long sand open to that ocean in which Chile is on the other side. I always love to think that if I took from there an plane to the American coast would arrive a day before I left.
Napier has, also, some memorable restaurant like Madame Social Eatery & Bar and Hunger Monger Seafood. And we sleep in a little guest house, Beach House Studios, that has only two rooms, in which the owners treated us wonderfully. It is not in the downtown area, That is his only inconvenience, But only for its owners and the care of the room is worth it.
Then, In the city's surroundings there are several magnificent wineries where to make wines and eat. Our favorite we tried was Black Barn, A great space with a memorable chardonnay. But Mission Estate Winery and The Church are the oldest and deserve a visit. Its religious names, They told us in The Church, It is because "the wine in New Zealand was introduced by the first missionaries".
Around Napier there is also a famous colony of hobby in Cape Kidnapers, that we could not visit for not reserved with time, y tea screen, a mountain we climb that allows several paths and offers good views.
Nothing dazzling happened in Napier, And we loved spending two days in Napier.
