Discovering the Bay of Plenty

Wherever I drive around New Zealand, I love venturing down back roads. It's something I've always done ever since I was a kid growing up in the Waikato, riding my bike for miles and discovering what lay down roads I'd never cycled down before. Last year, when I drove through the Bay of Plenty, I didn't have a lot of time to veer off the main highways, but I did stop many times to check out some of the small Maori communities that lay along the way. The photograph immediately above (bottom image) is of the Whetu o Te Rangi Marae of the Ngati Pukenga iwi. The top image wasn't far from there, but I couldn't get a good view of the complex. More often than not, the marae in any one of these communities throughout New Zealand, is surrounded by a cluster of houses, perhaps a Kohanga Reo and possible an iwi office. And they're rarely far from a kai (food) source - a river, a stretch of ocean, a stream.