New Zealand

While human beings were tromping and paddling their way across most of the world’s continents and islands for tens of thousands of years, New Zealand—better than 1,000 miles off the southeastern coast of Australia—lay off the radar, gloriously remote and uninhabited. Leave it to the expert seagoing navigators the Polynesians, though, to eventually stumble upon it, which they did sometime in the 13th century. Maori culture remains one of the most vital strands of New Zealand heritage, and—along with the unbelievable grandeur of the landscape and the fertile setup for outdoor recreation—a major draw to this island nation, more on the map than ever before.

Like Hawaii and Easter Island, New Zealand’s one of the great anchoring outposts of Polynesia—the southern one, to be exact. And even though numerically speaking the Maori are a minority in the country—New Zealanders of European (mainly British) ancestry dominate the demographics—their indigenous heritage is inseparable from the landscape. Traditional village gathering places, or marae, are accessible to organized tour-goers, providing a venue for hangi feasts, haka war dances, and other cultural expressions. And there’s no better place for exploring the Maori world than Rotorua on the North Island.

These days, a notable sub-genre of New Zealand tourism centers around Tolkien, given Kiwi director Peter Jackson used New Zealand's fortressed snowpeaks and bucolic hills as Middle-earth stand-ins for his cinematic adaptations of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Cultural explorations—Maori, Hobbit, or otherwise—are only one kind of foray served up in New Zealand, justly lauded as one of the planet’s major adventure hubs. The landscapes include towering, glacier-scarfed mountains, steep-walled fjords, steaming geothermal basins, moss- and fern-laden temperate rainforest, tussock moors, and the titanic, millennia-old kauri trees of the Northland’s Waipoua Forest. A whole network of long-distance footpaths introduces the trekker to the grandeur and scale of this Kiwi wilderness: from North Island’s Lake Waikaremoana trace to the granddaddy of them all, the South Island’s Milford Track, often ranked among the most stunning hiking trails on Earth.

Backcountry hiking’s one thing, but thrill-seekers also find rich pickings in the country’s adventure-sports culture: skydiving, bungee jumping, spelunking, off-roading, whitewater rafting, ziplining—the list goes on. And wildlife enthusiasts have New Zealand’s unique ecology to explore—including some of the globe’s best opportunities for whale-watching, especially off Kaikoura.

New Zealand’s one of those travel destinations where the caliber and variety of attractions are matched by a high standard of tourist infrastructure. Stop-you-in-your-tracks beautiful, it feels charged with possibility—and ever-increasing ranks of visitors are taking New Zealand place up on its promise.