Manaakitanga

I’d like to share a few words here about a word and concept - that is unique to our country.

Manaakitanga is the Te Ao Māori concept of looking after people - of hospitality,

If you break this word down it literally translates to the respect (or mana) you give through looking after other people.

It is our guiding philosophy when people choose us to look after them - whether that is for the day, on our waka, on for the week on retreat.

Even on a half day mission, showing guests from overseas around our back yard, this is our guiding philosophy. No one trip is every the same, because the people that board our waka are never the same, and we will make the trip as special as they are.

Let me elaborate with a journey I just took my new friends Cade and Alia on yesterday

After a few weeks off defragging after a busy spring, this was my first trip back on the moana in a bit, and it felt like the first proper summer charter. The waters warmed up a few degrees, the sun is cranking.

I got the call up last minute from Cade & Alia, from the US, wanting to catch a kingfish on their journey through Aotearoa New Zealand. A pretty simple request. On the way out after getting to know them, I realised they were actually water babies, avid divers & not to mention serious kaimoana fanatics, so I back tracked after catching livies to add wetsuits & freedive gear to the mix, and a nice cold slab of yellowfin caught by mates yesterday (yes bro!) & wasabi.

We caught a Kingfish for a very stoked Cade, then Alia followed with another. If we had of followed the original brief, this was job done.

Then we toured Ruamahua, the Aldermen Islands are checked out some seriously mind blowing 8 million yr old rocks for the geology grad Cade. You could see the stoke really emerging now!@

Getting in the water was never our plan at the start of the day, but I knew these two just had to get in and check out our underwater world, and it just topped the day off. Alia was sitting on the top of rocks feasting in kina, and Cade caught his first every crayfish by hand.

With salt dripping off us, and the magic of the ocean all around us, we then feasted on some fresh sashimi prepped at sea. Again, not part of the script, this just happened. The stoke as we headed back into Tairua that afternoon was real! “Highlight of our New Zealand trip”

And the best part - I felt that positive energy or stoke, come back at me, I got to see a place I sometimes take for granted through the eyes of two other human beings, because of the hospitality they received. After a couple of weeks on land, this was just the positive energy experience I needed too.

That, my friends, is manaakitanga.