Forest footsteps
Beauty on our own doorstep
A Murupara-based tourism venture was bringing pride, and economic benefit, to one of the country’s most deprived areas and winning awards and plaudits along the way – then Covid-19 struck.
Kohutapu Lodge and Tribal Tours director Nadine ToeToe said that overnight, 98 per cent of their customer base vanished.
It was an especially hard blow as ToeToe admits that before the pandemic and border closure, they were ‘‘ready to take on the world’’.
They had been winning over young hearts and minds, and filling pukus, with their uniquely authentic experience that saw their United Nations of guests visiting the local school to distribute hangi – in total they delivered 30,000 meals to the children.
More importantly perhaps, the visitors got to share stories and interact with the children there.
German tourist Ivana Crnjac, who was on the tour when Stuff tagged along last November, said it was completely different from what she described as the typical ‘‘take a photo and off again’’ tourism.
‘‘This is a real life experience meeting people,’’ she said. One hour is just too short. I would like to stay for a day or two.’’
Then Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis also got in on the act praising the concept as ‘‘a great example of an off-the-beaten-path tourist offering’’.
It was a unique offering and when Stuff took the tour last year, when they had just scooped the 2019 Tourism Aotearoa Industry community engagement award, it seemed the sky was the limit. That optimism changed quickly. ‘‘The impacts of Covid hit us immediately and fiercely,’’ said ToeToe.
‘‘Our product was almost 100 per cent reliant on international visitors, who had an appreciation for our model of cultural tourism, which was simply based on real life.
‘‘Our visitors unashamedly helped us to utilise tourism to give back to our community any way we could.’’
ToeToe said the intervening months since the international tourism tap was turned off had been spent ‘‘in survival mode’’.
‘‘Doing anything and everything we possibly could to first of all get ourselves psychologically out of the rut we were in, and then we had to dig deep, and get creative and try and save our business.’’
ToeToe said the challenge was how to attract New Zealanders ‘‘to part of the country they would not normally holiday to, and to do things they would not normally try’’.
‘‘The tourism industry was brought to its knees, and we fell with it,’’ she said.
‘‘The journey has almost destroyed us, but it has not killed us. We are still here.’’
Here and with a new offering, the Whirinaki Forest Footsteps guided tour through native rainforest.
It’s a venture ToeToe said she hopes will remind Kiwis of one of the ‘‘lockdown lessons,’’ a gratitude for the staggering natural beauty on our doorsteps.
The full day tour sees guests taken deep into the heart of the forest to learn about Rongoa Rakau, traditional medicine plants, 1000-year-old Totara trees, myths and legends.
‘‘Visitors can fill their own water bottles straight from the waterfalls, see the tallest moss in the world and enjoy ‘forest bathing,’ the art of using your senses to connect to nature.’’
ToeToe said that while she was excited to launch the new venture, and their new self-contained accommodation at their lodge site, the school visits will not return until the international tourists do.
She said that part of their former offering was also what ‘‘resonated most’’ with the visitors, and that their absence had been felt.
‘‘We live in an isolated town. Our biggest obstacle was the narrow, small world these children live in Murupara,’’ said Murupara Area School principal Angela Sharples.
‘‘It was hard to get them to see the world as a place they could go out into, that they were part of a global community.
‘‘By interacting, asking questions, getting to know foreigners, hearing accents and languages outside their own the children quickly gained knowledge and saw the world in a different and much larger way.’’
Sharples said the visits had a particular effect on the children’s language skills, as it taught them to ask questions about their visitors countries, careers and their aspirations.
Despite the international visitor absence, however, the children have still played a role in the new venture.
‘‘We’ve trialled the new venture, using the forest with our students,’’ Sharples said.
‘‘A wonderful experience for the kids.’’
Kohatapu Lodge’s Whirinaki Forest Footsteps launched on December 9, with tours departing the Rotorua i-Site at 8.30am, returning between 4.40pm-5pm.
Nadine ToeToe
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