New Zealand's Rich Produce From Both Land And Sea

Beyond the overwhelming picture-postcard wonders of New Zealand, the country’s vastness is best sampled through the bountiful edible harvest of its land and sea.

- Bianca Husodo

More often than not, when people speak of New Zealand, the usual conversational suspects would arise: the amusing pastoral myth that there are 20 sheep for each New Zealander or Kiwi as they are affectionately called (in truth, there are about six to one), the nation’s all-consuming fixation with wine and rugby and, of course, the breathtaking vastness of its nature that is so often pegged to J. R. R. Tolkien’s fictional Middle-earth realm for his iconic The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which was filmed entirely there.

But as I sat ensconced in a helicopter cockpit, at about 1,500 metres above sea level and flying over the mountainous terrain of the South Island’s Fiordland — the conserved national park in New Zealand’s southwest corner — none of the things I have heard about the country readied me for the overwhelming visual majesty below us. Fjords that slash into its coastline, carved by glaciers from erosion-proof granite more than 10,000 years ago; delicate craggy caps, powdered with snow; crystalline lakes and primeval forests, bursting forth in its untouched state of wilderness.

New Zealand consists of an archipelago of two major islands, the North and South Islands — which together, is known as the mainland — and hundreds of minor islands dotted nearby. Located south-east of Australia, it is geographically far removed from the hullaballoo of the rest of the world.

And it is.