Sponsored Video: New Zealand as a Destination

This post is sponsored by Tourism New Zealand:

Ever been to New Zealand?  We haven’t made it there yet, but is certainly on the list once our kids are either old enough to travel or out of the nest.  Home more than just film sets of the Lord of the Rings franchise and multiple other franchises, NZ is becoming a real tourist magnet.  For a brief intro to New Zealand for the uninitiated, it’s a large island country 900 miles East of Australia initially occupied by the Maori, of which many cultural and artistic remnants remain, but was subsequently settled by Europeans and hence, 98%% of the population speaks English which is more than can be  said of, well, many western English speaking countries.   As this is a Finance site, you’d probably be interested to know than New Zealand ranked 5th in last year’s Human Development Index (HDI) and 4th in the The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom.

The wife and I haven’t made it over to that side of the world just yet (Hawaii and India are the longest flights as of yet!), but it’s certainly one of those bucket list trips.  Of the friends we have that have been to Australia, each of them have ventured on to New Zealand as well with the notion that it’s a place that can’t be missed while in the region and none of them have been disappointed.  I was stricken by the imagery and feel in the video below; definitely worth the watch if New Zealand is somewhere you’ve ever considered visiting: