Day 157: Akaroa

I met up with my old friend Matt today (I met him in Auckland on the free city tour) and headed out to Akaroa on the Banks Pennisula.  The Banks Penninsula is a little south of Christchurch city and Akaroa is the principle town on the penninsula.  We grabbed some food for a picnic lunch (in the rain!) and made the windy, hilly drive in about an hour and a half.  It's very beautiful; lots of high hills and deep valleys.  Akaroa's main feature is that it was oringinally a French settlement, and many of the streets bear roadsigns in French and with very French sounding names.  Matt and I ran around to see how many French things we could photograph in 30 minutes of trying.  We found a lot!  (I think the town is trying to capitalize on its French heritage because there were things like Le Bon Email (online cafe) and L'Essence (the local Shell station.)  Fun nonetheless.

A bit outside of Akaroa we also found a cool pa site. Pa were the Maori defensive works - usually with an earth wall or fence around them.  This one was on a little spit of land sticking into the ocean (we think the access was only tidal) formed in high humps of hills.  We took a little hike out to the end and enjoyed the surrounding view.  It would be a good defensive position - you could only access it by land from one direction, and that only when the tide was low, and you have a great view of the surrounding water so you could spot a potential enemy approaching by water, and have the advantage of being above them (up the hill) as they tried to attack.  Good choice, Maori tribe of old.

While we're on the subject of Maori and their traditions, it's Maori New Years here.  The new year is marked when the constellation Pleiades (The Seven Sisters) appears again in the sky after having disappeared a few months ago.  In Te Reo Maori the Pleiades are called Matariki.  So that is what they call New Years as well.