Anywhere else, I’d have my eyes firmly fixed on the trail ahead, wary for snakes or dangerous critters. [...] my head is angled up into the green canopy, where shafts of the day’s last minutes of sunlight create a kaleidoscope effect — a swirl of emerald, azure and gold. The cultural history in this distinctive and beautiful region at the far northern edge of the North Island — from the kauri forests to the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, from the colonial buildings and whaling history in Russell to the spot that separates the Pacific Ocean from the Tasman Sea where Maori spirits are believed to leap to the water to return to their ancestral homeland of Hawaiki — offers a deeper understanding of its complex past.