How Much Do You Know about New Zealand?

Visitors to New Zealand have remarked about how beautiful the country is.  It is primarily two long, narrow islands with many smaller islands all around.  Since the islands are narrow, you are never far from a coast or a canyon in the mountainous interior.  It is estimated that the furthest you ever are from a coast is 128 kilometres; you’re closer than that to a land based casino.

It is also interesting that for a country that has so much to offer the nature enthusiast, Kiwis, the nickname for New Zealanders similar to Aussies for Australians, love to pay casino games.   There are six land based casinos in New Zealand.  Four are run by the SkyCity Group. 

Thus, if you are travelling to New Zealand, you are also never very far from a land based casino.  The country has also taken a political liberal view of online gaming.   Springbok Casino sees itself as the best online casino for New Zealand even though there is strong competition from many other online casinos.

About Online Gaming

We assume that you know quite a bit about online gaming and Springbok so we’ll devote just a small paragraph to ourselves and the rest of this blog will be devoted to travelling in New Zealand.

One of the biggest advantages online casinos have over land based casinos is that online casinos have no travel costs.  If you’re already travelling in New Zealand this may be less of an advantage than if you’re many hundreds of kilometers from the closest land based casino at home.  Online casinos also have more games, a greater variety of games, higher return to player rates, and perhaps best of all, no waiting.  Cyberspace is unlimited so it doesn’t matter if one or one million players are playing a given game; there is always room for one more!

About New Zealand

Now, let’s see if we can’t learn some interesting things about the beautiful, rugged, cloudy country of New Zealand.

A Very Long Name

When the European adventurers and settlers came to North America, they found that the Native American languages were functionally impossible to learn.  Many long place names in modern day America are actually the shortened versions of the Native American names.  However, the place with the longest name in the world is in New Zealand.  We won’t try to reproduce the name here because we are afraid that we’ll leave out a letter or ten.  Suffice it to say that the name has 58 letters and is basically just the name of a hill in Hawkes Bay.

A Vast Majority of Animals

Most people know that there are more sheep than people in New Zealand.  What most people don’t know is the extent of the animal majority in the country.  95% of all living creatures are animals (excluding bugs, of course).  That means that only 5% of the animal population is human!  If the progressive movement in other Western countries to allow animals to vote ever happens in New Zealand, we will see a Prime Minister from a dominant animal group!

Indiana Jones

Indy would love living in New Zealand as he simply hates snakes and there are simply no snakes at all in New Zealand.  That there are no native snakes is remarkable in itself but that no snakes have snuck in on ships is beyond amazing.

Close to Antarctica

New Zealand is so close to Antarctica that no other nation’s capital is as far south as Wellington and penguins live on the south island.

Money

Nothing costs less than 10 cents in New Zealand as the smallest denomination of currency is 10 cents.  A little known, yet interesting, fact.

Bowling as a Dangerous Sport

You might think that lawn bowling is a benign sport whilst scuba diving has some risk to it.  The fact is that year after year more people die whilst lawn bowling than whilst scuba diving.  It appears that many “couch potatoes” get up to bowl as their primary sports activity!

Maori

The native Maori language is recognized as an official language.  The name for New Zealand in the Maori language is Aoetaroa which means long, white cloud.  In some ways the climate of New Zealand resembles the climate of Scotland where the west coast of Scotland sees clouds almost every day of the year.

Bagpipes

Staying on the connection between New Zealand and Scotland, New Zealand has more Scottish Bagpipe bands per capita than even Scotland itself.

Supervolcano

Although Yellowstone Park in the United States is the most famous supervolcano in the world, a supervolcano erupted in New Zealand only 26,000 years ago.  There is no telling how much damage another supervolcano eruption would cause to the world’s delicate climate balance.

Steep Street

Baldwin Street in Dunedin is the steepest street in the world even though Lombard Street in San Francisco is a lot more famous.

Slovenia in the Southern Hemisphere

New Zealand has at least one thing in common with the central European country of Slovenia.  Whilst fully one-half of Slovenia is forest, one-third of all of New Zealand is national park land.

Another interesting comparison between Slovenia and New Zealand has to do with population.  Slovenia is twice the size of little Israel but has only one-fourth the population of Israel.  Similarly, New Zealand and Great Britain have roughly the same land area but New Zealand has about one-seventeenth the population.

Kiwi

Kiwi is the nickname New Zealanders give each other.  It is also a fruit native to New Zealand.  It is also a bird.  Ironically, the kiwi bird can’t fly yet it is on the logo of the Royal New Zealand Air Force.

Status of Women

Many people know taht New Zealand was the frist nation to give women to right to vote back in 1897 bt few realize the extent to which womewn play a major role in public life.  New Zealand is the only country (by far) in nwhich all major public positions were held by women at the same time.

This happened in 2006 when the Queen of England, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, the Chief Justice of the New Zealand Supreme Court, the Governor General, and the Speaker of the Bew Zealand House of Representatives were all women.

There is a Lot More

We have covered just the tip of the iceberg about New Zealand.  The country has a giant flesh-eating snail and a massive insect.  And a lot more as well. 

So when you’re in New Zealand, perhaps you could play casino games at Springbok Online Casino and leave the land based gaming to the locals.