NEW ZEALAND
56 AUGUST 2017The near-deserted beach at
Piha. BELOW Kitekite Falls,
a short hike from PihaSetting out on the highway from Auckland to the
west coast town of Piha, the Kiwi enchantment
begins to take hold. Anyone driving to the surfer’s
retreat must first negotiate the Waitakere Ranges,
an abrupt vegetative Eden of subtropical kauri forest
that acts as a barrier between the twinkling lights
of civilisation and the untamed coast.
After a 30-minute drive west, the road corkscrews
into hills carpeted with nı ̄kau palms, some as giant
as pantomime beanstalks, then careers down the
other side to meet Piha’s sheer cliffs, pock-marked
with nesting sites for gulls. It’s mid-afternoon when
the campervan trundles into Piha, passing scattered
weatherboard houses and parking in front of a beach
being pounded by waves. This volcanic sand has
Marvel-superhero strength, so rich in iron it
will stick to a magnet.
New Zealand’s surfers are also drawn here, and
talk about it in poetic terms matched only by the
place’s name itself – Piha is the Ma ̄ori word for the
onomatopoeic crack of surf sliced by the bow of a
canoe. The town is so laid-back and low-key that if
the surf club were to shut, it’d surely disappear off
the map completely. Following a different clock to
the rest of New Zealand, surfers rise with the tides
and the streets empty at sunset.
With his sun-bleached mop of tousled hair,
national longboard champion Zen Wallis embodies
Piha’s surfing ideal. He’s out on the water most days,
catching break after break as they blow in off the
Tasman Sea, before darkness finally sends him
ashore. (He even admits to sleeping with his board
before a competition, for luck.)
Also a surf coach, Zen has a deep knowledge
of Piha and talks about its waves in reverential
metaphors. The predominant onshore wind, he
explains, creates a potent hit, attracting only
hardened surf-addicts to the town. ‘Life existed in
black and white before the sport arrived here,’ he
says, the sky turning oily purple behind him. ‘Now
we wake everyday to a kaleidoscopic, world-class
wave, but without the crowds. It’s like a drug.’EMOJI, E-MĀORI
Following the resurgence in
recent decades of interest
and pride in Māori culture,
last year saw the launch of
Emotiki. The brainchild of a
manager at Te Puia geyser
park in Rotorua, this set of
Māori-themed emojis are
free to download via an
all-inclusive app. Now,
instead of texting yellow
smiley faces, phone users
can send expressive green
tiki masks (emotiki.com).T
he Ma ̄ori call them ma ̄ kutu, or witchcraft,
because in New Zealand the roads are magical.
One minute they surface, unfolding along
pastoral foothills; the next they vanish,
furrowing deep into Triassic-period jungles laden
with silver ferns. It is an untamed corner of the
universe that rewards those travelling under their
own steam. With the keys to a campervan, drivers
can – on a whim – go in search of a lake glimpsed
through the window, or stop to climb a hill spotted
in the rear-view mirror – because their bed for the
night is never somewhere distantly ahead, but
always about two feet behind them.ILLUSTRATIONS: EMOTIKI® THE WORLD’S FIRST MAORI EMOJI APP WAS DEVELOPED BY TE PUIA MAORI CULTURAL CENTRE IN ROTORUA NEW ZEALAND56 AUGUST 2017