Aotearoa Uncovered

Female First delves deeper than the usual travel story, focusing primarily on the geographical and cultural make-up of NZ. “NZ comes with a reputation as a unique land packed with magnificent, raw scenery: craggy coastlines, sweeping beaches, primeval forests, snow-capped alpine mountains, bubbling volcanic pools, fast-flowing rivers and glacier-fed lakes … All of this provides a canvas for boundless diversions […] Only in the last couple of decades has NZ come of age and developed a true national self-confidence, something partly forced on it by Britain severing the colonial apron strings in the early 1970s, and partly by the resurgence of Maori identity … More recently, integration has been replaced with a policy of promoting two cultures alongside each other, but with maximum interaction. In this way NZ is set to forge through the new century with considerable dignity and a good deal of uncertainty.”