Manea Footprints of Kupe

I had a 2pm spring Saturday reservation. Waikoru welcomed me warmly, showed me around and even told the sorry of some interesting gallery artecrafts. Then Bella, my guide arrived. Can’t thank her enough for her professionalism, passion, and kindness. I learned powerful insight on Maori heritage and history… The twilight Waipoua experience later that day with Tawhiri was all the more meaningful. Thank you all for helping me understand better, appreciate Maori culture and language. Your sense of pride and hopeful life perspective is inspiring.

A beautiful way to understand the true history and discovery of New Zealand. Alot of places to have photos taken by the awesome carvings. The professionalism and theatrical energy is outstanding. A must on your list if you go to the Hokianga Harbour. We had the privilege to experience MANEA.

The Twilight Encounter through the Waipoua Forest with Manea Footprints of Kupe was a wonderful experience and we were so glad we did it! Our guide Peter was extremely friendly and knowledgable. Walking through the forest was absolutely magical, and we felt very connected to nature throughout this entire experience. Highly recommend booking this tour, you won't regret it and it was the most unique thing we did during our entire trip to NZ!

Really wondeful immersive experience! We visited with my three kids (age 4,6,9) and they were really engaged and talked all day about what they’d learned about kupe, the wheke (octopus) and Taniwha that guard the Hokianga. Ngā mihi nunui ki a Waikoru rāua ko Bella - a big thank you to our wondeful hosts.

Honestly SUCH an amazing experience! Learned much more than I thought I would have about Maori culture and Hokianga. It was done in such an in-depth way that kept it entertaining as well as educational. The 4D experience was also a huge surprise! Highly recommend!!! We caught the 10am session and glad we did with the amount of people coming for the afternoon sessions.

Beautiful experience for my family and me. The tour was informative and captured the spirit of the Maori people. Our guides were great their performances were perfect. The video and effects show was top notch. It made Disneyland's theater look like child's play. Well worth the money, plus we got some good fish and chips on Opononi. We also got to see the Koutu Boulders.

Superb experience. Couldn't recommend it more. It was both informative and entertaining. Don't miss it.

The concept of the tour was very strong, but we had trouble following along. Beautiful intro walk through the park with traditional chanting/singing and explaining the varying taniwha (spirits). The theatrical/4D experience was beautiful but very very hard to understand at certain points. Perhaps offering headphones would optimize the sound to help, or offering some form of legible text/subtitles to help follow along. Especially for non-native English speakers or the hard of hearing. The performers and guides were stunning. The story room was also a really lovely idea but very hard to follow. Having the sound play out loud along with coming through the headphones made it very difficult for people in the room to concentrate on just one story. Choosing to have the sound just play through the headphones would be much better. Our favorites were the interviews with members of the community who spoke in the native Māori language, we would have loved to hear more of those. It gives you such a true feeling of the culture/people. Also having a bit more of a chronological lineup/guiding arrows through the room would have been useful. Regardless of all of these tidbits we really enjoyed the experience. Thank you so much for sharing with us!