Features

A band of larger-than-life characters are emerging from remote corners of New Zealand to make their mark on the world stage in 2005.

As unenticing as burnt toast may sound, it has certainly intrigued art buffs in galleries nationally and internationally, thanks to Maurice Bennett's pixilated 'toast portraits' and 'tapa cloth' toast designs.

New Zealand born yachting legend Sir Peter Blake is the only sailor to have taken part in the first five Whitbread Round the World races. He also led his country to two successive America’s Cup victories.

There is an ancient whakatauki (proverb) of New Zealand’s indigenous Māori people that metaphorically reflects on the inevitable fall of great leaders and the consequential uprising of the new generation to take their place.

Imagine hiking for six days, never seeing another soul and not even stepping out of a national park? If you don’t believe there’s such a place left on earth then you haven’t discovered Kahurangi National Park.

Like all best kept secrets word eventually gets out, so it's no surprise - with luxury travel now one of the country's fastest growing tourism sectors - that the world is waking up to New Zealand's luxury travel possibilities.

New Zealand trout fishing expert Ron Giles (author of Hooked on Trout: How and Where to Catch Large Trout in New Zealand) offers visitors tips on hooking a trout in New Zealand.

'No matter where I am in the world, the East Coast of Aotearoa will always be my home. It's like the magnetic lodestone that keeps pulling me back to our island fortress at the bottom of the South Pacific,' Witi Ihimaera says.