Checkin Taranaki
After our stay in Wellington, our next goal was the Tongariro Crossing in the center of the North Island. Dagmar booked this alpine hike such that we would have a bit of time to explore on our way over, so we decided to travel up the North Island’s west coast (not to be confused with the South Island’s West Coast we wrote about previously) to see the city of New Plymouth, located in the shadow of the volcanic Mt. Taranaki.
On the way, we spent the night in a little town called Whanganui. And that funky place name calls for…the linguistics minute!
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When reading a New Zealand map, you might find yourself struggling to pronounce place names, as a large number of them are taken from the Maori language (frequently referred to as “te reo” which simply means “the language”). Particularly troubling are names like “Whangarei” and “Whakapapa”, as you’re sure to make a fool of yourself if you pronounce those the way you just read them in your head. The “wh” in te reo is typically pronounced as an ‘f’, which means the above names are actually pronounced “fahng-gah-ray” and “fahk-a-pa-pa” by Kiwis.
Why the weird spelling? Well, te reo did not actually have a written form until European settlers arrived. As we understand it (take this all with a grain of salt, as we didn’t take the time to refresh the exact details before writing this down–please write if we’ve gotten something wrong!), missionaries in the early 1800s were the first to try and invent an orthography for the language, and they were actually the ones to use “wh” to represent what now sounds like an “f”.
You might be scratching your head and wonder why English-speaking missionaries made such a bizarre choice. Like all languages, however, te reo had and has different dialects–just as English words sound different depending on whether you learned in the US or the UK, the sound represented by “wh” changes regionally. It can sound like anything from an English F, to a ‘bilabial fricative’ (instead of your bottom lip touching your top teeth like in English, your two lips just get close together) to that old-timey “wh” sound mocked in this clip and this one.
We again didn’t fully do our research so may be wrong, but our assumption is that those early missionaries were talking to Maori speakers using that final form of pronunciation, hence the spelling. The ‘f’ pronunciation is the one that has taken the most mainstream role for English speakers pronouncing te reo words.
So far, so good: “when in New Zealand, pronounce ‘wh’ in funky names like Fs, got it.” But that brings us to Whanganui–not actually pronounced like an F! We think this is because that region originally used the less F-like pronunciation, but don’t quote us on that. Confused? This video will help!
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And that’s it for the linguistics minute! Anyway, we stayed in Whanganui one night (almost as much time as it probably took to push through that mess of a ‘minute’ above) at an AirBnB. Having lost all sense of propriety, we decided to do our nightly workout (we had started doing the home-fitness program Insanity during our post-Level 4 stay on the Otago Peninsula), despite the fact that there was only a curtain separating our half of the living room from our host watching TV several feet away. He certainly wondered what sort of wheezing mounds of whale blubber he had invited into his home, but was a very nice person to chat with and recommended some stops on our way up to New Plymouth.
Among these was the Durie Hill War Memorial Tower, located inside the city itself. Like we talked about in our Wellington post, New Zealand has a complicated history with World War I, and this tower commemorates the soldiers from the region who died in that war. Looking like it had been plucked from medieval Europe, it had a never-ending set of spiral stairs which led to a gorgeous view of the city!
Once we arrived in New Plymouth, we were happy to have another stretch of days in a spacious AirBnB. By this point in our trip, any day we didn’t have to pack all of our things in and out of a suitcase was a great one, so multiple days in the same spot was a godsend.
Our hosts were extremely nice and even let us hop on their bikes for a BEAUTIFUL ride down the boardwalk. The seat was a little hard on Stefan’s butt, but the stellar views absolutely made up for it.
We also took advantage of the nice weather to hike to Mangakotukutuku Falls (always a fun name to say!). This started out in an absolutely beautiful cow pasture, and quickly transitioned to a forested uphill walk. On our way, we managed to get lost…two times! The first time, we absentmindedly branched off the trail onto a dry riverbed and made it around 50 yards from the trail before we noticed anything was wrong. After seeing the falls, we made the exact same mistake on the way back…after which Stefan pointed us in the wrong direction and we walked right back up to the falls. We like to think of ourselves as being more outdoorsy after having tramped all around New Zealand, but that doesn’t seem to be the case!
After we arrived back down, we had a little picnic out in the gorgeous cow pasture and enjoyed some amazing chickpea sandwiches Dagmar made.
As the weather got rainier, we also paid a visit to the Goblin Forest. No relation to anything Lord of the Rings as far as we know; it’s just named that way because all of the ferns and moss give it an enchanted, fantasy feel.
In New Plymouth itself, we visited the Puke Ariki museum, which covers both the history and science of the surrounding region. Highlights included lots of information on local fauna (both current and extinct), a nifty interactive electronic display showing the effect of predators on endangered species, exhibits on the original settlers in the region (including a smellable display of all the stinky odors they would have endured on the ships!), and lots of details on the volcanically active region. Both of us remarked on how great it must be for children to take trips with their schools and families to learn about where they’re from–neither one of us can really comment on ANY of the above topics with regards to Rolla.
We also took advantage of the slower pace around New Plymouth to absorb some New Zealand culture. As mentioned earlier, we had started doing our nightly workouts (which Dagmar did an outstanding job motivating Stefan to do in spite of his incessant whining)–most often, these were done while watching a British trivia show called The Chase which was incredibly popular among Kiwis and which we had originally learned about from our very first HelpX host.
We also became good friends with the radio while driving: Stefan even spent an extra 15 minutes sitting in the car late one night to finish an episode of a radio show which talked about the science behind popular movies. This particular episode covered Flubber, a movie Stefan hadn’t realized was a remake of the Absent-Minded Professor, which had originally given birth to silly putty as a product. This original product apparently caused people’s hair to fall out and was harder to get rid of than a cursed doll in a bad horror movie: Hasbro tried burning it (releasing noxious clouds of smoke), dumping it in the junkyard (where kids raided it and stole from the stockpile), sinking it (it floated and the Coast Guard returned over 50,000 flubber balls), and burying it (it stuck under a parking lot until the 90s just before the new movie’s release when changing water tables caused it to surface through all the cracks in the parking lot). The chemist they invited on the show explained how the fictional flubber from the Robin Williams movie also showed some catastrophic characteristics: its ability to bounce higher than it’s dropped from means it must absorb energy from its surroundings, evidenced in the movie by the flubber container always being icy cold. This implied the danger that after a certain amount of time bouncing in the same area, the flubber could reduce that area to absolute zero, and thereafter potentially rob the entire planet of energy before bouncing off and depleting other bodies throughout the universe. Stefan loved this mixture of science and popular culture, and has continued to be an avid listener of RNZ Nights since returning to the US! The science fiction portion recently even spun off into its own podcast.
Along with all of our culture absorption, we used our AirBnB downtime to plan our next big adventure: completing the Tongariro Crossing! Stay tuned to our blog to find out how that went 🙂
Until then, leave a comment in honor of the Puke Ariki museum: what are some interesting facts you know about the geology, history, or animal life of your own hometown? We’d love to hear what you have to say!
Finally, we couldn’t find a good space to fit this in above, but here is this blog post’s companion video!