Lifestyle and Recreation

From our unique culture to our huge range of outdoor activities and our friendly, laidback attitude, we reckon New Zealand is an awesome place to live and play. With a temperate climate, easy access to thousands of miles of beautiful beaches, four weeks paid holiday a year, and a dedicated life/work balance – some call ours one of the best lifestyles in the world.

Read on for a little more about the lifestyle and recreational opportunities in New Zealand:

Get outside to play

There’s always some adventure to be had in New Zealand. It really is a natural playground, one that New Zealanders treasure and enjoy daily.

We have great surf beaches around the country, and in winter the lower South Island provides amazing snow mountains for winter sports. Everywhere you go there’s something new to do, even if it’s a relaxing picnic in one of our natural reserves.

Over 1/3 of New Zealand is made up of protected parkland and marine reserves. They encompass a wide variety of scenery, vegetation and geography, and offer numerous opportunities to camp, mountain bike, fish, hike and much more.

You'll find plenty of solo and team sports here. Some of our favourites include rugby, cricket, netball and swimming, but you’ll also find everything from white-water rafting to hiking, football to basketball, fishing to skiing… and the list goes on!

A multicultural mix

Every person you’ll meet in New Zealand is either an immigrant or a descendant of one, which gives New Zealand a true multicultural feel. The first settlers were the Maori who arrived over 700 years ago, followed in the nineteenth century by large numbers of immigrants from the United Kingdom. The end of World War II saw a dramatic increase in European migrants as citizens fled war-weary countries for a new start.

From the 1960s, people from neighbouring Pacific Islands including Samoa and Tonga began settling here, primarily in Auckland. Chinese and Korean migrants followed in the 1980s, many also making Auckland their new home. These migrants have given the city a very strong Pacific and Asian feel.

More recently, New Zealand has welcomed new residents from a wide range of countries such as the US, South Africa, Zimbabwe and India. 

Just be yourself

One of the things you’ll find in New Zealand is the acceptance of different views and ideas. New Zealand is a modern, secular, democratic society, with no ingrained class system. Freedom of speech, expression and religious beliefs are guaranteed by law.

Some democratic milestones in New Zealand:

• In 1893 New Zealand was the first country to give women the vote.
• New Zealand was the first sovereign state to introduce free public health services and a minimum wage.
• Our country remains a nuclear free zone despite having faced strong outside pressures.
• In 2004 the Civil Unions Bill was passed, which gives both opposite and same-sex couples similar rights to married couples.

In short, New Zealanders are a diverse and tolerant lot.

Quality of life

In many ways, it’s not what New Zealand has that’s important to quality of life here; it’s what we don’t have.

• We don’t have abject poverty or hunger, largely because of a commitment to social welfare dating back to the 1930s.
• Corruption is virtually unheard of. New Zealand was ranked the 2nd least corrupt country in the world in the 2008 Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International.
• We don’t have the pollution, congestion, health issues and cramped city living that is often the case elsewhere.

What we do have is equal opportunity where people are not judged on their gender, how they sound, what colour they are, how they vote, or where – if – they go to church.

It all adds up to a fresh, healthy lifestyle in one of the most beautiful countries in the world.