Why You Can’t Miss the Tamaki Maori Village Experience in Rotorua

Looking for a unique way to delve into the Maori culture in New Zealand? Look no further!

The Tamaki Maori Village in Rotorua is a Maori-run center for tourists to experience the traditional customs of New Zealand’s indigenous peoples.

I immersed myself in the cultural travel experience in 2018 while touring New Zealand.

After spending a day with locals who could tell us more about past and present Maori experiences in New Zealand, I had a profoundly different understanding of the country. It impacted how I viewed every activity afterwards – even skydiving over New Zealand.

Don’t miss this must do cultural experience in Rotorua. Get out of those hot springs for an evening to see a traditional haka, eat a delicious hangi buffet, and learn more about the people who shaped New Zealand.

To help prepare you for your visit, I’m sharing my experiences at the Tamaki Maori Village and how it changed my perspective.

🇳🇿 I recommend this Maori village experience

Who are the Maori people in New Zealand?

The Maori are the Indigenous peoples in New Zealand.

Australia has the Aboriginals. The USA has the Native Americans. Canada has Indigenous people. While, New Zealand has the Maori.

Maori people are unique from the Aboriginals in Australia. They actually came from the seafaring Polynesians, making them more closely related to native Hawaiians than the closer Aboriginal peoples, who are landfaring.

Unfortunately, like most indigenous cultures, when the Western world “discovered” the already populated nation of New Zealand, they decimated the Maori population.

New Zealand has been working to repair this damage in a more earnest way than I’ve seen anywhere else in the world, but there’s still a long way to go.

For example, Maori people are more likely to be homeless and uneducated than white Kiwis. While the country has recognized Maori as an official second language and is trying to produce more childrens’ books in Maori, there is a huge disparity in hiring practices for Maori people.

While the country is coming to accept the Maori culture, it feels like they still need to accept the Maori people that come with it.

Maori Village Rotorua

There are many Maori villages in New Zealand. Most aren’t open to the public, but are functioning communities of Maori peoples.

Maori village life still maintains some traditions. For example, haka welcome ceremonies must be done by men-only. They are composed of Marae, or gathering houses, and include symbolic tattoos relating to deities that are carved into their structures.

However, most Maori people now live outside of these traditional communities. They connect spiritually without the need for a physically bound community.

The Tamaki Maori Village in Rotorua is a tourist-friendly village that was constructed to demonstrate the Maori culture. It was created by the indigenous people to represent their heritage and help them increase their community’s income from tourism.

To this day, when you visit, you are giving back to the plentiful Maori community of Rotorua.

🇳🇿 I recommend this Maori village experience

What Can You Do at Tamaki Maori Village?

• Train like a Maori warrior
• Watch haka and poi dances
• Participate in an ancient welcoming ceremony
• View traditional art
• Hear stories of past cultural traditions
• Learn about Maori tattoos and other culturally significant symbols
• Eat a traditional hangi dinner

The Tamaki Village

The Tamaki Māori Village was one of New Zealand’s highest rated attractions in 2018. They have won numerous awards for being the best cultural activity in Australasia and are rated one of the top 10 cultural activities in the world.

The Tamaki Māori Village is a cultural experience located in the forests of Rotorua.

At the village you get to engage with traditional Māori activities, learn about their culture and embrace their mythology. Authenticity is held in high esteem to offer you the best snapshot of Māori traditional life possible. The Māori tribesmen and women who work there are mostly from the Rotorua area and have a wealth of knowledge to share.

You are brought into the culture on a personal level that makes it resonate even more.

The Tamaki Māori Village offers two choices for visitors: the Evening Experience and an Overnight Stay.

🇳🇿 I recommend this Maori village experience

The Evening Experience

The Evening Experience greets guests to the village with a traditional welcoming ceremony. Following the welcome, guests partake in short workshops that explain Māori mythology and cultural practises. This includes a chance for men to partake in the traditional haka (war dance) and for women to spin the poi (a traditional toy).

Watch your hāngi dinner be taken out of the pit before enjoying a traditional song and dance display by the Māori.

Finally, enjoy your buffet hāngi meal with dessert in the dining hall.

🇳🇿 I recommend this Maori village experience

The Overnight Stay Experience

The Overnight Stay includes the Evening Experience plus additional activities. Arrive in the afternoon to tea, with paraoa parai (Māori fried scones).

Settle into your Whare Moe (sleeping house) and learn about Māori mythology.

Your hosts will teach you a Māori stick game and how to sing the Māori alphabet.

After dinner, sit around a bonfire and learn more about Māori history.

End the night with a soak in a hot tub before going to sleep. In the morning, you will be given a continental breakfast before being driven back into Rotorua.

This is the experience that I opted to enjoy for a complete immersion in Maori village life.

My Tamaki Maori Village Experience in Rotorua

Arriving at the Village

Before arriving at the Tamaki Māori Village, you must elect a chief for your group. The chief must be a man to adhere to Māori sacred customs (even Queen Elizabeth II isn’t allowed to participate).

We were greeted at the village with a Māori speech and song of welcome. In response, we sang an unintelligible version of “We Are Family” – the only song we could think of.

Unfortunately, our family didn’t know the words to the song.

Luckily, your performance doesn’t determine whether they let you in. Otherwise, we would have been sleeping on the street!

At afternoon tea we stuffed ourselves with hot tea or coffee, cakes, cookies and paraoa parai. These Māori fried scones are a greasy, but delicious treat to smother in jam and clotted cream.

Learning the Mythology

The Whare Moe are long sleeping quarters with single beds lining the walls. The bed was just as comfortable as advertised. I was so comfortable that I could barely sit up for the mythology discussion.

The walls are decorated with carvings of Māori ancestors or gods. The red, white and black beams on the ceiling support the building like ribs. A single column in the middle of the room represents the building’s heart.

Every detail of the Whare Moe has meaning in the Māori culture. The red, white and black represent the Sky Father (black), Earth Mother (white) and the blood from their separation to create the earth.

I put my hand up at least five times to pry more information from the brothers guiding us.

Traditional Maori Games

Woody and Harry, our guides, split us into two groups to share traditional Māori activities with us.

Half of the group learned a stick game while the other learned to sing the Māori alphabet. After twenty minutes, we switched groups.

The stick game involved stamping and throwing poles around a circle. It looked simple when Woody did it, but it took us the full twenty minutes just to complete one round successfully.

The alphabet song was easier to master. We learned the unique sounds of the Māori alphabet with their matching gestures.

Pro tip: “wh” in Maori is pronounced as “f”.

It felt like being at a cultural summer camp. (I would definitely go to that camp!)

The Welcoming Ceremony

The pōwhiri or welcoming ceremony is used to welcome guests to a marae (sacred place), such as the iwi’s (tribe’s) land. The ceremony began with the Māori chief giving a speech about his iwi and his culture. Three Māori warriors joined him and presented an aggressive challenge known as the wero. They held weapons, called out battle cries and exuded a sense of violence. This demonstrates their strength and tests the visitor’s courage.

I would definitely have been scared to face the Māori after seeing this!

Finally, the warriors lay down silver ferns at the feet of the tourists’ chiefs as a symbol of peace.

The ceremony ends with the hongi, the native and visiting chiefs pressing their noses (and sometimes foreheads) together.

To welcome the guests inside the marae, a female Māori greet the group.

Cultural Workshops

To show hundreds of tourists their culture in just a few hours, the Tamaki Māori Village have developed small workshops.

In an hour, we attended six workshops that highlighted different elements of the Māori culture. The men participated in a haka (war dance) and the women spun a poi (a traditional toy used in dances). There were two more stick games. Woven into the games were lessons and mythology.

Did you know the word “tattoo” originated from a Westerner misunderstanding the name for the Māori process of tattooing?

The best part of the cultural lessons was the traditional song and dance done by the Māori staff.

Cameras didn’t stop flashing throughout their performance.

The women flew their poi like birds and the men stuck their tongues out in the haka. Knowing the cultural significance of the moves made them that much more breathtaking.

Hangi Dinner

The Tamaki Māori Village dinner is advertised as an “all you can eat” meal. That is not necessarily true, as they didn’t leave the food out for long and they ran out of dessert.

However, we got to try hāngi! Our dinner had chicken, fish, lamb, roast vegetables and salad. Vegetarians got samosas instead of meat.

If you wanted to have an alcoholic drink with your meal, you had to line up in a queue that seemed a mile long.

I stuck with water and the free tea/coffee station.

Dessert was bread pudding and pavlova. Unfortunately, they ran out before everyone could get some.

After dinner, the Evening Experience guests are driven back to Rotorua.

🇳🇿 I recommend this Maori village experience

Overnight Stay

The Tamaki Māori Village website talks about a bonfire with mythology and storytelling for the Overnight Stay guests, but that didn’t happen for us.

Instead, the Māori staff took the time to chat with us individually about their culture and beliefs. I think that personal connection was more meaningful, but a bonfire would have been wonderful.

The Māori at the village were the best part of my stay. They all have a strong connection with their roots and took the time to interact with all of us. Every question I asked was answered, even the ones that I tried to make difficult.

Most of all, they were fun!

I’m terrible with names, but I still remember Woody and Harry who shared their culture with us.

I stayed up until 2 a.m. laughing in the hot tub and pestering Woody with questions. That was the one down side of the experience: I barely slept in the amazing bed!

Breakfast was a simple continental spread of tea, toast, cereal and fruit. I was just happy to have a provided breakfast for once instead of rushing to make peanut butter toast in a hostel kitchen.

It was hard to leave the Tamaki Māori Village. Though it was only one night, we had done so much that it felt like we had been there for a week. I still wanted to learn so much more.

Since the village, I’ve sought out all of the Māori historical and cultural information I could find throughout my travels. I explored Cape Reinga, visited museum exhibits and travelled to the Te Matatini Kapa Haka Festival to see more of the dancing I loved so much.

Tamaki Maori Village Price

The Evening Experience costs $130 NZD per adult for the 3.5 hour experience. This price includes transport to your hotel in Rotorua.

The Overnight Stay costs $250 NZD per adult.

🇳🇿 I recommend this Maori village experience

Best Maori Tours in New Zealand

• Tour the buried Maori village of Te Wairoa
• Explore the spiritual world at Cape Reinga
• Discover ancient Maori rock carvings on a sailing cruise
• Get a guided tour of New Zealand’s best Maori museum
• Do the Hell’s Gate Geothermal Walk and relax in a Polynesian spa
• Half-day cultural tour in Auckland with Maori peoples
• Guided tour of a geothermal Maori village
• Stargazing and Maori cultural trip
• West coast day tour with a Maori guide from Auckland

Closing Thoughts

Visiting the Tamaki Māori Village is the best cultural experience I have ever attended. It is obvious why they have won so many awards. I wish other indigenous cultures had such immersive and interactive opportunities available for guests to learn more about them. It’s so important to learn about the first people to exist in a country.

While it may not be as photographically glamorous as Hobbiton or swimming with dolphins, the Tamaki Māori Village is a New Zealand must do.

You’ll have a newfound appreciation for the country you’re visiting.

Not only did doing the Tamaki Maori Village Overnight Stay help me to understand Maori myths, but it also taught me about the current issues facing Maori people living in New Zealand.

When you’re in New Zealand, I highly recommend adding the Tamaki Maori Village to your itinerary.

🇳🇿 I recommend this Maori village experience

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