Why traveling in New Zealand is so magic
The nature in New Zealand is unique, most native plants and animals are only found in New Zealand and nowhere else in the world. In addition, humans have only been present for a relatively short time, the indigenous population, the Maori, only arrived in New Zealand around 1200 AD and slowly populated the two islands from the north. Western people only discovered New Zealand halfway through the 18th century and only started settling in New Zealand around 1880 mainly on the northern Island. This is why, especially on the southern island, large parts of the country are still completely untouched, there are often good roads that cross this untouched nature, but everywhere you can see that nature outside these roads can still go its own way. Bridges over rivers, for example, are often extremely long so that the underlying river still has all the space to meander as the river “wants” to. The province fiordland on the southernmost side of the south island has no roads at all, only on the provincial border there is a road, the rest of this province has no roads and many mountains and rivers here do not even have names. Hardly anyone ever comes here, so there is simply no need to name them all. The only people who do come to Fiordland are mainly hikers who make beautiful almost magical trips here on often multi-day walks on well maintained paths and with overnight huts where some basic stuff is available to eat and spend the night. For example, there are beds with a kind of mattresses and pots and pans available but things like a sleeping bag or food must be brought by the hikers themselves. Something that is also special about New Zealand is that the people who live there, they are really super friendly and really look after each other, you notice this especially in the rural areas where relatively few people live, in the larger cities this is a bit less but even there there is a certain friendliness that you rarely or never encounter in the Netherlands (the country where I live). I have been traveling through this fantastic country for about 8 weeks from 2009 to 2010, and up until now New Zealand is really one of my favorite countries, I can therefore recommend everyone to make a beautiful trip here. For me it was really a magical experience.
