New Zealand offers a highly diverse experience when it comes to culture, tradition, and history through the Maoris, an indigenous people from New Zealand. Legend says that Maoris used to travel by canoe to a mythical land of ancestry called Hawaiki around a thousand years ago. These settlers from Polynesia would travel in open boats called canoes that still look very similar to the boats that can be found in Polynesia today.

New Zealand is isolated on the map and is comprised of various small islands in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, as well as two larger islands. Separated from Australia to the northwest by the Tasman Sea, the Fiji islands and Tonga can be found in the north. New Zealand is 268670 sq. km big, just a little less than Japan but more than the United Kingdom. New Zealand has a wide variety of marine sources and has the fifth largest Exclusive Economic Zone on earth. This means that this country alone can claim over four million square km, which is fifteen times more than its land area to explore and use its marine resources. Read more »