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Matakana island report from Maaike van Haastert.
Dec 12/08
After spending half the week on the horsefarm again, I worked on Freedom who I'll be riding today to
Matakana Island. I did Reiki on him and am actually happy with the results and have decided i should do more with this back home. Forget about people, i'll stick to animals.
The ride begins.
We unloaded the horses near the crossing and everything went well until Venus decided to sit down in the trailer, and while getting up, hurt herself causing a small wound on the top of her hind leg. Luckily we'll ride through salt water, which will be a good treatment. Freedom has been calm like a lamb ever since we've been riding him with a rope halter instead of a bridle. No more problems with him. He doesn't even give his one little buck during canter anymore!
We're with a total of probably 30 people an dhorses on this ride.
Crossing at low tide through the ocean to the island is a great experience! There's mudflats, lower & deeper water to ride through, and a lot of splashing! The total crossing took approximately an hour. I was with the 1st group going through the deeper end and once on higher ground I turned around to take a picture of the rest of us, which were coming with the second group.....but Freedom somehow didn't like the look of it and definately didn't trust it, so I barely even got a chance to reach for the camera, when I decided it was probably smarter just to follow the group and keep him calm. I don't want accidents on the begining of the ride! The funny thing is that Freedom had just gone through all that water with this group, and yet he doesn't trust another group coming towards him, which by the way, are his own mates.....funny stuff.
We had to stay inbetween the path of the guides as there can be deep sinkholes outside of that path.
Once reaching Matakana we rode the waterline around the island before making our way to the pasture and the Marae.
Freedom behaved very well all day, exept his whinnying to find out where Venus was once in a while. Also funny b/c the two don''t really get a long but can't go without eachother at the same time...
Once at the Marae, we got the official Maori greeting, presssed noses (damn i forgot what its called now) andhad a lovely, or better, wonderful dinner! With warm custard as a desert!!! That's something I rarely get to enjoy. Then we had a bit of a meet & greet and some history lessons about the island.
To sum it up:
There's 200 people that live here all the time but the maori family of the island consists of 1200 people. Kids and retired maori are the main inhabitants, the rest is isn university or working and then later return.
The govenor on the mainland some 200 years ago imported two arabians of a special breed. Two stallions. The ship they were brough on wrecked and the stallions were thought to have drowned. They, howerver, ended up alive on Matakana Island and were bred to the maori horses, which were mainly workhorses. This breed remained on the Island for a long time, and there were 100s of these horses, but once starting the connections with the mainland and bringing the horses there, the number started to receide. Untill the last were sold some 30 years ago and none were left. (or so the story goes.....not saying that i believe EVERY word of it).
Our guide grew up around these last horses and eventually bought a few horses from the mainland for his kids and cousins to learn riding. One thing led to another and now they organize these treks to the island and horses are slowly coming back into the lives of the Maori people on this island.
Dec 13
Today was beautiful again! Breakfast was great and Rob & Jeroen (Ingrid's boyfriend and her brother-in-law) showed up on time from the ferry and got their horses.
At 9:30 we left and we started with an hour or hour and a half ride through the water to the other side of the island. This time it was much deeper and one of our groups ponies, Freckles, had to swim. The little group of people i was riding with ended up a little bit behind but we had a Maori guide with us so everything was fine. He had his feet on top of the saddle so not to get wet, but a few minutes later he ended up in a deep sinkhole in the bog and he & his horse went head under water! His legs stuck out of the water since the pressure pushed them up, but he got straight back in the saddle and managed to get his horse out, saying "Okay, don't go here!" ......like we hadn't figured that already....
The funny thing was that 5 min before that he told us that he was master at knowing where these sinkholes are. We know why now.....he ends up IN them first!!!! :D
We rode through the pasturefields and through the forrest to the beach where we had a fantastic ride, galloping across the ocean shoreline and fooling around in the sand. Freedom finally stretched his legs and was headed straight to the front! However, at one point my left leg slipped through the stirrup and I lost my right one. I panicked for a moment picturing the horror of falling down and being dragged along with hoofs coming at me, untill i realized that with panicking, I'm sure to fall off. So I sat deep, held on and just let him run. I'd fix it when we slow down, so I just enjoyed the run. I love riding on the beach!
After the beach we had lunch and a beer at the bar, and managed to keep the horses that got loose within the nearby paddock. Then it was time for the next ride to a different bar, and a new adventure.
All the horses were tied up along the fenceline, but as we sat down one horse panicked and as a reaction they all started to pull with the result that now the Maori's have a new job of putting in an entirely new fenceline after the whole thing came out of the ground.....its okay, we're just creating jobs...(and just to note, our main guide is the fence contractor on the island....so he was ok with it).
So we found a new place to retie our horses and Freedom managed to get caught in his own rope and pulled two beams deep out of the ground, meanwhile, the horses tied up at the OTHER fenceline had managed to pull that one down as well. (ok...so maybe we didn't need to create THAT big of a job...)
Two seconds later a cart with Clydesdales showed up to take people for a ride if they wanted to while I was having my hands full trying to keep Freedom from rearing up as he was scared of this big structure. Thankfully it only took seconds for him to calm back down with a few nice words and after sniffing the cart and the horses he seemed quite content that they were....well....somewhat okay....
We then rode back to the paddock and let the horses go, took a shower and got ready for supper. One thing I learned from Petra today (see pictures): You can ride a horse in a dress, manage to change on a horse, and ride it sitting backwards or sleeping!
Dec 14
Gathering up our things today so they can be packed in the trailer that will take the ferry to the mainland. Then we had the Maori speeches, the Haka, some songs, and the official goodbye from the Marae.
We still had a days ride ahead of us through water, beautiful farm fields, marsh, untill we stopped for lunch at their favorite campsite. After lunch we had time for a short nap and then it was time to cross the tide again. I was riding Prince today and he's very keen to stay at the front. That was fine with me since I hadn't been riding with the front party yet. Near the end of the ride, after the guides gave me the OK I let him go way out front and he easily found his way to the path back home by himself.
After taking the saddles off we floated the horses home 2 at a time, washed them, and cleaned part of the gear. And leaving the rest to clean tomorrow. Everyone was tired but at least the horses were taken care of and we could take a shower.
Again I want to thank everyone for the wonderful time!! I hope we can all get back together one day and do something like this again!
To see pictures of this camp we've had last December, go to:
