New Zealand, Aotearoa (the land of the long white cloud), home to both NOW One Square Meal and Phil Keoghan, is a small island country perched at the bottom of the South Pacific. New Zealand comprises of two main islands - the North Island and the South Island, and the smaller Stewart Island to the south.
Maori legend tells of Maui, a mythological Polynesian demi-god with supernatural powers fishing new land up from the sea - Te Ika a Maui (the North Island of New Zealand) being the largest. Fact tells us that New Zealand was the last land mass on earth to be discovered, making it the world's youngest country.
New Zealand is renowned for its stunning natural beauty - vast rugged mountain ranges (the Southern Alps in the South Island alone are larger than the French, Austrian and Swiss Alps combined!), amazingly blue lakes and fjords, beautiful beaches and spectacular geothermal and volcanic activity. With 15,000 kilometers of dramatic coastline, more than 25 marine reserves, 14 national parks and diverse cosmopolitan cities, New Zealand is a remarkably unique country.
New Zealanders (or Kiwis as they are commonly called - named after the country's native flightless bird) are known for their 'Kiwi Ingenuity' - a term used to describe problem solving or innovating using unconventional methods. Burt Munro, builder of the world's fastest Indian motorcycle, Richard Pearse, who many believe achieved flight before the Wright Brothers and Ernest Rutherford, pioneer of atomic physics are just a few examples of those who embodied this Kiwi spirit.
NOW One Square Meal, an innovation in food that has won awards in food technology from one of New Zealand's top universities, is yet another example of this typically Kiwi trait. |
