TRAVEL | New Zealand
‘God's own country’ was brought to life by New Zealand's longest serving Prime Minister, Richard John Seddon. Landing in Queenstown, in the heart of the South Island, you don't have to believe in god to realise the celestial area's wonder.
The last time I visited New Zealand, I was five years old. My family – who moved to South Africa and then back there – live in the North Island. My great grandfather was Maori, and my family are descendants of Rongowhakaata Iwi, a tribe from the Gisborne Region, also in the North Island. When I found out I would be travelling to New Zealand, my father told me spending a week in Queenstown is as close as you can get to a ‘once in a lifetime experience’. He prefaced that by saying he doesn't believe in ‘once in a lifetime’, given the accessibility of the modern world, but that Queenstown was a special place. He had been once in the late ‘90s. Many of my New Zealand-based family
