During my stay in Auckland, I would have to say the highlight for me was the trip to the black sand beach. Happy to put a check mark on this item off my bucket list! I truly enjoyed walking on the soft, smooth and fine texture of the black sand. It’s something that one needs to experience as it is so hard to put into words. Imagine walking on snow but it’s warm! The feet feels so good that I didn’t want to put my slippers back on!
With the ratio of boats to humans being 1 to 4, no wonder Auckland is called the city of sails. Auckland is a beautiful city of friendly people, with a population of 1.49 million, constituting 32% of New Zealand’s population.
New Zealand is chiefly known for its agriculture, tourism and rugby (their #1 sport)! There are only 4.5 million people compared with 33 million cattle and 30 millions sheep! Everything is very expensive here since they need to import everything with the exception of sheep and cattle.
There were 65 million sheep fifteen years ago but that has dropped to 30 million now because the focus shifted to dairy farming. Farmers make more money in the dairy industry so they switched to raising cows instead of sheep. 70% of the milk powder in the world comes from New Zealand.
People from New Zealand are known as Kiwis and their culture can be characterized as ethical and honest. They’re also very laid back. I love the Kiwis!