Now Everyone Calls the Mountain Taranaki

Today we awoke to the bright sunshine of the Southern hemisphere, and a full schedule of people who wanted to meet us and share their slice of this wonderful land. The day began at the base of Mount Taranaki, where Greg and Judith Rupapera run Mount Taranaki Adventures, a biking and tramping company in Kaponga. Greg has that same spirit we've seen so often here in New Zealand: passionate about his land, eager to show it to visitors and locals, knowledgable, articulate and doing it on his own. Again and again, these entrepreneurs are the ones who fascinate and inspire us. Greg works a day job at a local dairy, and dreams of the day when his five-year-old trekking business becomes his fulltime job. It will, I promised him, if he keeps at it and works as hard as he can.

We hiked the trails in the bush that led up to Wilkie's Pools, a steep hike aided by steps that are maintained by trail volunteers. When he was a young man, Greg was one of the park employees who lugged concrete up there to form the steps. Today the water in the pools was quite low, it was being diverted into another stream so the pools were quite shallow. Up above, looking over us all was the volcano, and its distinctive shark's tooth crag.

Before we proceeded on our hike, Greg said a prayer to the Maori ancestors to ensure a safe trip and to ask their blessing. He said that recently there was a story in the news about another Maori property being sold off to a foreigner, even though it was still being litigated by the original owner. These issues still cause friction between the Europeans and Maori, although he agreed that things are pretty good between the two overall.

He said that when he was a kid, everyone referred to this extinct volcano as Mount Egmont, as it was named in honor of the Earl of Egmont by explorer Captain Cook. He didn't know that the Maoris had already named it for one of their chiefs. But today even the newspaper refers to the mountain by its original name.