All visitors to New Zealand must carry a passport valid for at least three months from the date they intend to leave New Zealand. Visas are generally not required for stays of less than three months. See www.immigration.govt.nz

Airports

New Zealand’s key international airports are Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. 3 hours by air from Australia, 12 hours from the United States and 10 hours from Pacific rim countries such as Hong Kong or Singapore.

New Zealand has strict regulations as to what can be brought into the country, especially any raw or cooked food, fruit of any kind, packed footwear or camping equipment, products made from wood or animals, etc, on arrival you are asked to fill in an arrival card, stating whether you are carrying any of the above. See www.maf.govt.nz. 

No vaccination certificates are required when entering the country.

By world standards, New Zealand is a very safe destination.

About New Zealand

Population

New Zealand has a multicultural population of about 4 million people.
Most New Zealanders are of British descent. In more recent times people of Asian and Pacific Island descent have been an increasingly significant proportion of the population.

The first inhabitants of New Zealand, the Maori are thought to have arrived over a thousand years ago. Maori make up around 14 percent of the population.

The first European to sight New Zealand was Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, in 1642, although never setting foot on the soil, he claimed NZ for Holland under the name ‘Staten Landt', later changed to New Zealand by Dutch mapmakers. In 1769, British Captain James Cook sighted the land and mapped the country.

European migration began soon after and by 1839 there were an estimated 2000 Europeans in New Zealand.

New Zealand is a long, narrow country lying north-south.
It consists of three major islands and many small islands.
The land area covers 268,000 sq km’s, slightly larger than the United Kingdom, about the size of California or Japan.
More than 1 million (a quarter of the population) live in Auckland in the North Island. The capital is Wellington, in the lower North Island. Christchurch is the largest city in the South Island with about 400,000 population.