{"id":43956,"date":"2026-07-20T20:00:06","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T08:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=43956"},"modified":"2026-07-20T20:00:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T08:00:06","slug":"celebrating-matariki-2-sunrise-at-midwinter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2026\/07\/20\/celebrating-matariki-2-sunrise-at-midwinter\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Matariki 2: Sunrise at Midwinter"},"content":{"rendered":"

I concluded last week’s M\u0101nawatia a Matariki post<\/a> with: “And because Matariki is a season that lasts through until ca. July 19 this year, there\u2019s still plenty of time to wish others M\u0101nawatia a Matariki and commemorate the season.”<\/em><\/p>\n

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Dawn skies, with hot pool water in the foreground, & the pier to the right<\/p><\/div>\n

In that spirit, on Saturday 18 I headed to He Puna Taimoana<\/a> (the local hot pools by the sea) for a sunrise soak — which was a first for me, but which I now thoroughly recommend for anyone living in, or visiting Christchurch.<\/p>\n

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See the steam rising…<\/p><\/div>\n

Twas a chilly -1 Celsius when we left home, but once in the pool (or the sauna) we were more than warm enough. And the dawn skies and sea, along with the sunrise itself, were all fabulous — as I hope the photos testify.<\/p>\n

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And here comes the sun at last, due east, out of the sea<\/p><\/div>\n

Aotearoa NZ is among the first places in the world to see the sun rise on the new day, so together with being the last few days of Matariki, the experience felt pretty special. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I concluded last week’s M\u0101nawatia a Matariki post with: “And because Matariki is a season that lasts through until ca. July 19 this year, there\u2019s still plenty of time to wish others M\u0101nawatia a Matariki and commemorate the season.” In that spirit, on Saturday 18 I headed to He Puna Taimoana (the local hot pools […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funstuff","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43956"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43963,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43956\/revisions\/43963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}