Lodestars Anthology, Issue 8 – New Zealand

Lodestars Anthology is not your traditional travel magazine. Focusing on one country per issue, it is instead an independent publication all about place, journeys and discovery. Made up of a collection of guides, interviews, essays, photographs and illustrations, the focus is on capturing colour and verve. By looking at a destination’s history, charm, quirks, secret corners and fascinating residents, Lodestars Anthology aims to encapsulate the essence of a country in a very fresh way.

In this issue:
Aotearoa, New Zealand, is a land of myth, created, according to Māori lore, when the Polynesian Demi-God Māui cast a fishhook crafted from an ancestor’s jawbone off the canoe in which he had stowed himself away.

With this, he hauled from the ocean’s depths a giant fish, which became the North Island, its mountains and rivers carved out by his brothers impatient to devour the catch. The South Island is their canoe, with secluded Rakiura, found at what feels like the end of the earth, formed from its anchor stone.

Today, with its sleeping volcanoes, mighty fjords, seemingly endless coastline and ability to make visitors feel deliciously small, New Zealand remains shrouded in a special kind of magic.