How to get to Kapiti Island
What is the best way to get to Kapiti Island?Jason's New Zealand
The island of Kapiti is a protected area and a protected area for birds, protecting some of the most rare and threatened wildlife in the underworld. For those who have difficulty talking Maori, the term Kapiti has been shortened from Te Waewae-Kapiti-o-Tara-raua-ko-Rangitane, which means the line connecting the Ngai territories of Ngai and Rangitane.
The municipalities are Te Horo, Otaki, Waikanae, Paraparaumu, Raumati and Paekakariki. Wwaikanae was recently honoured with the Keep New Zealand's Beautiful's Mosttiful Town award. North of Otaki you can go trekking and hunt in the Tararua Range or kayak and white water raft on the Otaki River.
From Wairarapa in the eastern part of the country, the Rimutaka and Tararua mountain chains separate it.
NZHistory, New Zealand Story on-line
Before 1840 New Zealand drew a polygonal mixture of adventure and business, the seal hunters, fishermen, blind passengers and their Maori operatives who formed what the historic geography expert Alan Grey termed a "robber economy". Pelagi or oceans catcher have been entering the Bay of Islands since the beginning of the 19th century. Coastal whale fishing began 20 years later, mostly further southward, around Cook Strait and along the eastern shores of the Sicily.
Those transatlantic vessels moved Ng?ti Toa leader Te Rauparaha to Kapiti Island. The Musket Wars were bad for his people, but Te Rauparaha was very smart and adaptive, a real cross-culturalist. It knew that the trans-Cook Strait vessels were the keys to commodities such as arms.
1823 Ng?ti Toa conquered the island of Kapiti, which they next year protected in the Battle of Waiorua. Kapiti, the center of a kayaking imperium, gave Te Rauparaha both a fort and a commercialization. Ships began to call in 1827, and when commerce reached its peak in the mid-1830s, there were five fishing spots on the island:
Waiorua, Rangatira, Taepiro, Wharekohu and Te Kahe Te Rau O Te Rangi. The Rauparaha team encourages merchants and fishermen to provide lands, homes, pigs, potato, clothed fluff and whales in exchange for weapons, cigarettes and drunk. The island researcher Chris Maclean described the 1830s Kapiti as "a fierce border, a rendezvous of two civilizations without the limitations of law or government", but despite sporadic brawls, two civilizations joined in avarice got along well.
The Europeans and M?ori were living side by side and the merchant and catcher John Niccol followed an ancient tradition and married Kahe Te Te Rau O Te Rangi, subsidiary of Ng?ti Toa Chef Te Matoha. In the 1840' s the whale-catching pale and Te Rauparaha, whose impact diminished, returned to the continent.
The whalers and Te Rauparaha are only part of the Kapiti family. Today Kapiti is an important protected area for birds of prey. However, the yachts take the visitor back to Kapiti and at Te Kahe Te Rau O Te Rangi you can still see patios, a rack for a trialpot (in which the whalefish has escaped) and the tomb of a catcher, as well as M?ori mids.