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ABOUT NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand
New Zealand’s awesome landscapes, lush forests, amazing wildlife and pleasant climate make it a haven for many outdoor activities, and a great place to unwind. New Zealand society is diverse, sophisticated, and multicultural, and the honesty, friendliness, and openness of Kiwis will impress you. And the great advantage of New Zealand is that all of its diverse physical, cultural, and artistic landscapes are so close to each other!
Our History
While New Zealand is a relatively young country, it has a rich and fascinating history, reflecting both our Maori and European heritage. Amazing Maori historic sites and taonga (treasures), some dating back almost a thousand years, are a contrast to many beautiful colonial buildings. A walk around any New Zealand city today shows what a culturally diverse and fascinating country we have become.
Our Culture
New Zealand has a unique and dynamic culture. The culture of its indigenous Maori people affects the language, the arts, and even the accents of all New Zealanders. Their place in the South Pacific, and their love of the outdoors, sport, and the arts make New Zealanders and their culture unique.
The Maori people are the indigenous people of Aotearoa (New Zealand) and first arrived here in waka hourua (voyaging canoes) from their ancestral homeland of Hawaiki over 1000 years ago. Today, Maori make up over 14 percent of the population. Their language and culture has a major impact on all facets of New Zealand life.
Maori culture is a rich and varied one, and includes traditional and contemporary arts. Traditional arts such as carving, weaving, kapa haka (group performance), whaikorero (oratory) and moko (tattoo) are practised throughout the country. Practitioners following in the footsteps of their tipuna (ancestors) replicate the techniques used hundreds of years ago, yet also develop exciting new techniques and forms. Today Maori culture also includes art, film, television, poetry, theatre, and hip-hop.
New Zealand - The People
Today, New Zealanders are largely sophisticated and highly educated urban dwellers. Members of a unique and vibrant multicultural society, New Zealanders are embracing 21st century technology and culture in record numbers. But New Zealanders also have a background of quiet but rugged individualism, self-reliance, and a genius for invention — qualities still evident in the population today.
New Zealand has a diverse population — but with some uniting features that make it unique in the world. Our relatively isolated South Pacific location and rugged landscapes still makes many New Zealanders quiet and independent, yet resourceful and self-reliant, with a famous ‘Kiwi ingenuity’.
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Natural Environment
With vast open spaces filled with stunning rugged landscapes, gorgeous beaches, often spectacular geothermal and volcanic activity, a temperate climate and fascinating animal and plant life, and it is no surprise that New Zealand’s pure natural environment is so attractive to visitors from other countries. And the great advantage of New Zealand is there are many different landscapes, environments, and ecosystems so close to each other.
About 80-100 million years ago, New Zealand drifted away from the massive supercontinent of Gondwanaland into the South Pacific. Since then, a unique flora and fauna has evolved, with a large number of beautiful native birds and plants, as well as direct descendants of prehistoric wildlife, including the tuatara, weta, and giant snail. As Time magazine said, New Zealand is an ‘ultimate storehouse for discontinued zoological models’.
New Zealand’s national symbol is a nocturnal flightless bird with nostrils on the end of its large beak. It is now endangered, and difficult to see in the wild. However, there are a number of ‘kiwi houses’ at zoos and wildlife parks. While they may look cute, kiwi can be fierce and highly territorial.
The tuatara is a unique relic of the past — the only beak-headed reptile left in the world. Every species of this reptile family, except the tuatara, died out around 65 million years ago. Tuatara can live for over 100 years, and were once found throughout New Zealand. Now they are only found on protected offshore islands - around 30,000 live on Stephens Island in the Marlborough Sounds. Only growing up to 24cm in length, tuatara are not a threat to humans.
New Zealand has abundant and diverse marine life, and whale watching and swimming with dolphins are two of New Zealand’s most highly recommended tourist experiences. The small (up to 1.4m) Hector’s dolphin is the world’s rarest dolphin and only found in New Zealand waters. There are a number of spots in the South Island where you can see Hector’s dolphins
Climate - Land of the Long White Cloud
Since the Maori people named New Zealand ‘Land of the Long White Cloud’, climate has been of paramount importance to the people of New Zealand — many of whom make their living from the land. New Zealand has mild temperatures, moderately high rainfall, and many hours of sunshine throughout most of the country. Its climate is dominated by two main geographical features — the mountains and the sea.
New Zealand has a largely temperate climate. While the far north has subtropical weather during summer, and inland alpine areas of the South Island can be as cold as —10°C in winter, most of the country lies close to the coast, which means mild temperatures, moderate rainfall, and abundant sunshine.
Because New Zealand lies in the Southern Hemisphere, the average temperature decreases as you travel south. The far north of the country has an average temperature of about 15°C, while the deep south has a cooler 9°C average. January and February are the warmest months of the year, and July is the coldest.
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New Zealand's Landscape
You’ll find a variety of awesome landscapes in New Zealand, all within easy reach of each other. Spectacular glaciers, picturesque fiords, rugged mountains, vast plains, rolling hillsides, subtropical forest, volcanic plateau, miles of coastline with gorgeous sandy beaches — it’s all here. No wonder New Zealand is becoming so popular as a location for movies!
Lying in the south-west Pacific, New Zealand consists of two main islands — the North Island and the South Island. In addition, Stewart Island and many smaller islands lie offshore. The North Island has a ‘spine’ of mountain ranges running through the middle, with gentle rolling farmland on both sides. The central North Island is dominated by the Volcanic Plateau, an active volcanic and thermal area. The massive Southern Alps form the backbone of the South Island. To the east of the Southern Alps is the rolling farmland of Otago and Southland, and the vast, flat Canterbury Plains.
New Zealand has over 15,000 kilometres of beautiful and varied coastline. In the Far North and on most of the East Coast of the North Island you’ll find long sandy beaches perfect for swimming, surfing and sunbathing. The North Island’s West Coast has dark sandy beaches, with sand heavy in iron. The north of the South Island has some beautiful sandy beaches, while the coastline around the rest of the South Island tends to be wilder and more rugged.
Over thousands of years, the process of subduction has seen parts of the New Zealand landscape become submerged. The Marlborough Sounds and Fiordland are examples of high mountain ranges that have ‘sunk’ into the sea, creating spectacular sounds and fiords. These areas provide some of New Zealand most picturesque scenery, with steep lush hills plunging down to the deep still bays below. Clear, deep still water surrounded by beautiful bush makes these areas ideal for boating and kayaking.
Milford Sound
The Maori were the first to attribute the creation of the fiords to a “titanic mason”, Tute Rakiwhanoa who hued out the steep sided valleys with keen edged adzes. No other explanation seems to fit, as it is impossible to comprehend the sheer breadth of geological events that created this seemingly perfect sculpture, as sheer cliffs rise vertically upward from the ocean.
Wet or fine Milford is incredibly grand. Mitre Peak magnetises photographers, and the fiord’s sheer cliffs excite both admiration and apprehension.
Milford is by far the best known of all of the fiords and the only one that can be accessed by road. It is approximately 16km from the head of the fiord to the open sea.
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Underwater World
Yet another unique feature of the Fiordland environment is life under the Fiord. Beneath the water, the mountains continue to plunge down as steep rock walls until they reach the floor of the fiord at depths of 100-450m. Few visitors are aware that below the tide line there exists a fascinating and unique world. A fresh water layer that sits on top of the seawater filters light to allow normally deep water dwelling species to exist very close to the surface. A visit to the Underwater observatory or on a guided dive tour allows access to sights rarely revealed to human visitors.
Doubtful Sound
Visitors feel humbled yet uplifted by the atmosphere of powerful solitude in the presence of superb physical grandeur of Doubtful Sound.
Sometimes called “the Sound of Silence” there is a cloistered serenity within Doubtful Sound that contrasts with Milford Sound. The fiord is rich in flora and fauna, New Zealand Fur Seals and Fiordland Crested Penguins can be seen on many of the small islets in the entrance of the fiord.
At 421 metres deep Doubtful is the deepest of the fiords and is long and winding with three distinct “arms” and several outstanding waterfalls in the area from Deep Cove to the open ocean, a distance of around 40.4 kilometres.
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