Rakiura / Stewart Island

Rakiura / Stewart Island sits at 47 degrees south, twenty minutes by light aircraft from Invercargill, and feels genuinely removed from the world. Eighty-five per cent of the island is Rakiura National Park — ancient podocarp forest of rimu, tōtara, and rātā, threaded with walking tracks that lead to deserted beaches and remote bays. Halfmoon Bay, the island's only real settlement, has a population of around 400 people, most of whom are involved in fishing.

The reason most visitors come is the kiwi. Rakiura has one of the highest wild kiwi densities in New Zealand — and uniquely, Mason Bay on the island's west coast is a place where kiwi feed openly on the beach at dusk, visible without a guide, in the fading light. Seeing a wild kiwi — the national bird, nocturnal, shy, and in serious decline on the mainland — in this setting is a wildlife experience with very few equivalents anywhere in the world.