Aotearoa Top 9

This is the one you've been waiting for. My top 9 reasons why New Zealand is awesome. They may be a bit jumbled, but here goes.

9. The Metric System.
It just rocks. I have successfully lost my grip on the American standard system (or whatever it's called). The bad news is I still don't really have a good feeling for the metric system, so I'm kind of in limbo. Go ahead, ask me what temperature it is outside right now. I have no idea.

8. New words
"Mate" is a very useful and versatile word. "Sorry bout that, mate." "Good on ya, mate." Also try "bugger," or "Gutted." The accent is sexy and the words are fun.

7. Weather
It's just so damn unpredictable. They say to be prepared for 4 seasons in one day, and it's likely to happen. Take my friend Trine, for example. She learned the hard way that New Zealand weather is refuckindiculous when she hiked up a mountain and almost couldn't get down after a half meter of snow fell overnight.

6. Climate
Welcome to TEMPERATE RAINFOREST. The rarest climate in the world. Temperate=seasons, rainforest=green. One of the only places you can walk out of a podicarp rainforest onto a glacier.

5. Location, location, etc.
We are at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, next stop Antartica. As New Zealanders learn to love themselves more and more they have realized how special that is. The Northern hemisphere can stop lovin itself because this is where it's really at. It turns out Southern hemisphere species have a one up on interesting evolution, and many lines originate down here. Also, penguins are the shit! Isolation makes people go crazy. Kiwis are quite quirky.

4. The Treaty
I think maybe this is really #1. I'm not sure though. The Treaty of Waitangi is a deceivingly simple piece of the past that continues to impact the lives of all New Zealanders, both Maori and Pakeha. Pakeha Kiwis have sometimes expressed their frustration at the Treaty to me, but I tell them to look at what happened to our natives: something just short of genocide. As a result of the Treaty of Waitangi New Zealand is close (and getting closer) to a fully functional bicultural society. Hooray for colonisation in a post-America/Australia/more-humanitarian age.

3. Landscapes
We got fiords, pancake rocks, volcanoes, boiling mudpools, earthquakes, plains, mountains, every kind of beach imaginable...such a huge diversity in landscapes in such a small country. Only in New Zealand.

2. Bush
No, not W. It blew me away that I could travel half an hour away from Auckland city centre, the biggest city in New Zealand, and be in the middle of a rainforest. New Zealanders love being outdoors. Their bush is their heritage, and the Department of Conservation is working overtime all the time to save it. It is lush, beautiful and incredibly fragile.

1. Fauna
New Zealand's current ecosystems are more of the ruins of once great ecosystems than fully functional ones, but the surviving species are some of the most rare and unique in the world. From flightless ratites to an incredible array of seabirds to orcas to tuataras to the rarest penguin in the world, New Zealand fauna kept me in a constant state of awe. Learning about the plight of New Zealand's species (both extant and extinct) has been absolutely inspiring.

I don't really know why I did 9. I wasn't shooting for 10...I just thought of 9. In any case, my love for New Zealand extends beyond any list of reasons, no matter how long. I've been back for a week, and things still feel quite surreal. Did I really go there? And if so, why the fuck didn't I stay?

I can't wait to go back.

--Lizzie