Travel / What they don’t tell you about Christmas in New Zealand |
‘I still think New Zealand the most beautiful country I have ever seen,’ Agatha Christie marvelled in 1922. Evidently she’s not the only one. A century on, the great crime writer’s ‘astonishing’ verdict on the country in the South Seas echoes and re-echoes, most dependably in the familiar media rankings of the ‘best’ places in the world for Brits to make a Christmas getaway. New Zealand, it seems, is forever top of the pops.
New Zealand’s scenery, when you finally get to see it, is undeniably beautiful, but for British tourists much of the splendour can be undeniably familiar
Whether measured by the views of the relevant travel editors or surveys like the Daily Telegraph’s recent poll of 20,000 readers, my country apparently beats all comers as a destination for Brits wishing to be ‘thrilled, awed, relaxed and awakened’ for the festive period, as the Telegraph recentlygushed.
And there are many takers. Around 190,000 people in the UK make the journey each year; that’s down a bit since before Covid, but not by much. Some make the trip to see relatives and friends while also escaping the winter blues. But others simply want to experience for themselves what the actor Stephen Fry hails as ‘Earth destination number one’, a land forever billed as wondrously safe, affordable and easy to get around.
Does New Zealand live up to all the hype? It is certainly jam-packed with craggy fjords and........