While
we've been on the South Island, we'd not seen many Maoris or signs of
Maoris. But since leaving Wellington, we've seen more in a day than
in the whole of the previous two weeks. Somebody explained to me that
the Maoris lived mostly on the North Island because of its warmer climate,
although there are Maori lands on the South Island that we passed by.
Two days ago at the Te Papa museum we were able to discover much more
about the Maori lifestyle, and were stuck by the similarities to things
we saw and experienced in Fiji – which isn't surprising, as the Maoris
originally came from the South Pacific Islands to populate New Zealand.