Archive | New Zealand
The Perfect Knife

The Perfect Knife

Affluent Magazine - January 2007 Mark Andrew Oliver, the Executive Chef at the exclusive Carrington Golf Resort in New Zealand, is no ordinary chef. He once quit a fine dining gig to sweat for three months in the galley of an Antarctic fishing boat where he served hundreds of exhausted fishermen three meals a day, just for [...]

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Polynesian Touch

Polynesian Touch

Spa Magazine – October 2007 On a crisp spring day I drove past the stucco subdivisions, commuter trains, and skate parks of suburban West Auckland and considered the following, seemingly innocuous, question: “Am I okay with deep bodywork?” Atarangi Muru, a world renowned Maori tohunga (traditional healer) from New Zealand, posed it to me three [...]

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Waka Power

Captain Stan has spoken. It’s time to open the sails as we shove off from Doubtless Bay on a waka horua, a traditional Polynesian catamaran, built from two massive dugout canoes lashed together and bridged by an expansive deck. Opening its sails requires coordinated effort from all 14 on board. The masts are heavy, shaped from one piece of solid timber. We push and pull and seconds later, with the masts secured, the sails unfurl.

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