New Zealand Wrap-up

New Zealand or at least its South Island has some excellent scenery, but not much else. The landscape is certainly unique given NZ's geological, geographic, and weather patterns, but I'm not sure that its that different from things you can find elsewhere in the world. It seems like it would be a great place to come to if all you wanted to do for several weeks was camp, hike, and do other outdoor activites, but probably isn't the greatest place to blow through as quickly as I did.

Culturally, its probably even less exotic to an American than Austarlia. If anything, New Zealanders are more like Canadians or British than anything else I can think of. Its British heritage is very apparent; it almost seems in many ways like NZ is still a British colony. (The food is relatively bland and they eat lots of fish'n'chips in addition to meat pies.) There was less Maori culture evident than I expected, but I guess that's always true with such things.

Another thing that seemed odd about NZ is its economic future: it is clearly a first-world country, but doesn't seem to have much of an economy beyond tourism and farming. I can't understand how it will be able to sustain itself economically because the more tourists come here the less desireable of a place it becomes for tourism. People in NZ also seem resistant to the idea that they should probably strengthen their economic and political ties to Australia and to Asia as Britian is no longer looking out for it.