Auckland's culture club

Otara market is a melting pot of cultures. Picture / Simone Egger

Ours seem to be the only white faces in this huge, bustling market but - apart from the woman at a weaving stall who says rather imperiously, "You aren't allowed to take photos here" - no one seems bothered by our presence.

We're surrounded by people from the four corners of the globe: old women with wrinkled walnut faces under woven bowler hats, stocky brown-skinned dudes swaggering in American university sweat shirts, dignified Muslim elders with turbans and long beards, dark-eyed chicks in tight jeans swinging to the sounds of their iPods, impassive Chinese traders keeping a wary eye on their trays of cheap watches, and mountainous women in billowing, brightly coloured dresses.

A lonely Christian evangelist competes with the melodic chanting of a hip-hop artist; spicy food aromas mingle with those from a coffee machine in the back of a van; fans woven from palm leaves and feathers are on display next to blow-up Spiderman dolls, and mysterious bulbous roots sit alongside piles of oranges and bananas.

It's always satisfying to discover a place like this, but I can't help wondering where all the other tourists are.

"Yeah," says Melissa Crockett, our guide to this intriguing new world. "Strange, eh? I'm always amazed at how many Aucklanders have never been here.

"I think it's because they have the idea that Otara is dangerous. But as you can see it's as safe as anywhere else in Auckland."

We're at the Saturday morning Otara Market, the largest Polynesian market on the planet, and one of the stops on a Potiki Adventures tour offering a contemporary urban Maori experience.

Crockett has been named Young Tourism Professional of the Year - the first woman and the first Maori to win the award - so I decided to take one of Potiki's tours to see what the tourism industry is so enthusiastic about.

The company was founded three years ago, with the aim of combining Crockett's business skills with the outdoor adventure knowledge of longtime friend Bianca Ranson, to offer "adventure Maori-style".

But they soon found that Crockett's recreational interest of shopping, especially for arty crafty stuff, is just as popular as the tramping, kayaking and abseiling that Ranson loves.

Their tours offer a mix of outdoor adventure and shopping in craft galleries - all put into a gentle Maori perspective - and balanced according to the interests of their clients.