So here I am watching late night TV on one the minor channels which shows a 50/50 American and British shows, and it has the Late Show on, I'm not really watching but I turned to listen for a few second, I can't remember the joke but David started talking about Kangeroo meat and he said he thought they had it in Austrialia and New Zealand To quote Mark Twain "If it would not look too much like showing
off, I would tell the reader where New Zealand is; for he is as I was; he thinks he knows...It will be a surprise to the reader, as it was to me, to learn that the distance from Australia to New Zealand is really twelve or thirteen hundred miles, and that there is no bridge." Which for the record makes NZ the remotest country in the world and we were the last place on the earth to be settled by humans, excluding Antartica if you call that settled; and no, we don't have kangeroos!

New Zealand is mentioned so much in international TV, I just watched An inconvenient truth and NZ was mentioned in 2 circumstances which isn't too bad when we are in the middle of nowhere with the population of a large city, Al Gore seemed to know where we are but so many times NZ is mentioned in part of some stupid comment which not only shows they don't know where we are, it shows that they think they know where we are.

So for your information NZ is in the South pacific, a very long way South East of Aussie and a similiar distance to Antartica, plenty of forest still around although it is threatened by foreign invasive species, the worst of them being humans, most of our animals and plants are endemic, meaning that we have a ton of really strange creatures which you can't find anywhere else, we have the highest concentration of Gondwanian biodiversity in the world which is cool. We also have a widely varied and diverse landscape, with more coastline than the US, a mountain range which is part from the most visible faultline from space, 1 of a few countries with fiords, we have tropical climates quite close to perminant snow and so on. And yes, we do have a ton of sheep, although you don't really notice them unless you go out and drive in the country, its something like 16 sheep per person so you can keep on making sheep jokes.

Oh and the Automobile association recently released a 101 top places guide to NZ:
http://www.aatravel.co.nz/101-must-dos-for-kiwis/index.php
I find it funny that the parliamentary buildings are ranked at 100, despite being one of the more iconic and unique parliamentary buildings in the world I think we are one of the few countries who would rate it as one of the least interesting places to go.

wasn't lord of the rings filmed in NZ?

I would really like to go there one day...

So was King Kong; not to mention Peter Jackson was born and raised there.

What is the weather like in New Zealand Pisces? I always wondered that.

And if the parliamentary building are listed and number 100 of the most interesting places to go to in New Zealand, and it is a very interesting place, doesn't that mean just about everything else in cool and interesting?
Sorry if that made no sense, I need to go get lunch.

NZ....the country in my dreams....I haven´t lost hope going there....I did get to US...so why not NZ? I just looooooooove it..... *sigh*

I think the parliamentary buildings being so low is partly because everything else is cool, kiwis (New Zealanders) have a much greater appreciation for nature than cities and we hold government and patriotism in a low regard.

The weather varies quite greatly where you are, the north has quite tropical weather, humid, no extreme heat the temperature usually stays in the 20s and early 30s (celsius), south of the north Island it is very windy because of the 'roaring forties' (wind current around the southern hemisphere) and the fact that it is a channel between the islands there, it gets a fair bit of rain but nothing like the UK, I've never been to France but I would guess it would be similiar except for the wind. East coast of the south island has the mountain rain which stops most bad weather from reaching us, it can still get cold, a typical day would be 0-17 in winter and 20-30 in summer it usually stays. West coast of the south island gets all our rain bring a coat if your planning to go there but there are plenty of nice days too. The mountains themselves have warm days and usually snowing or stormy at night regardless of season or the weather elsewhere.
One thing which you northern hemisphere people won't be used to is that the ozone hole meaning the sun gets more intense the further south you get, coupled with the lack of pollution; although the air and ground never gets too hot the sun can be very hot, a 30 degree day will often feel like a 40 degree one when your in the sun.

how would you wind up with an ozone hole with a lack of pollution? im no expert, but arent those sort of things usually caused by pollution?

I don't know celsius being as I live in the US, so would 20-30 feel cool, warm, or hot?

Or could someone just give me link to a site that can translate it for me?

http://www.wbuf.noaa.gov/tempfc.htm
68-86 fahrenheit, so its warm by most standards I think.



The ozone is charged (I think) so the ozone will stick around the northern hemisphere while the hole stays around the south pole, the ozone depleting pollution (which is different from everyday pollution) came from the north and we get the consequences.

Sounds nice there... it's about 73-75 here right now, but will be getting hotter soon. A lot hotter.

I will definetly visit New Zeeland. And maybe if there is time, I will also check out old Zeeland.

I moved two newZeland when i was five and stayed there until i was nine, it was cool and all but my mom made me do alot of nature hikes. They have really good water parks and it is was a nice place to live. pedestrians even had the right of way. It also had many good beaches and was very clean.
Only problem is there is almost no basketball and no football

forgot the tell u that it is really cheap to live in new zeland

New Zeland has a high population of farm animals( cows sheep ........) and they produce a great amount of methane when they fart(yes sheep fart)

I don't think it's methane that lowers the ozone layer, it's actually chloroflorocarbons (CFCs). They were typically used in aerosol sprays, and in air conditioners and refridgerators in like the 70s and 80s. Once scientists discovered these CFCs were destroying the ozone layer, they banned the use of such chemicals that created them. Though, I don't know if third world countries have payed attention to that ban or not. Don't trust me to that last statement though.

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas (as distinguished from CFC's, which do indeed degrade the ozone layer), more powerful than carbon dioxide but less abundant in the atmosphere.

More on topic, I've had many friends travel to New Zealand, and they universally loved the experience.

Methane is primarily burped not farted, it comes from animals with a special type of stomach (like cattle), wet soil especially rice paddies, rain forest and food waste in dumps (composting does not produce methane). Humans produce twice as much methane as what nature does so right now there is 3x as much methane productions as is what is natural, or about 2x what there was 100 years ago.

CFCs and other things depete ozone and make an ozone hole, which was slow decreasing in size for a while after CFCs were banned, but more recently it has started growing slightly since America has been increasing ozone depeting pollintants, Bush wants a much more dramatic increase since he's not welcome in NZ anyway, technically NZ is still banned from diplomatic relations with the US because we banned nuclear weapons and during the cold war the US didn't like that; but the ban only affects military relations now.

The price of fish has been steadily increasing as fish stocks are deminished and restrictions are added to prevent the destruction of marine resources, an ozone hole and increase of sea temperature will further affect marine populations increasing the price of fish further.