Church of the Good Shepherd, Lake Tekepo: When my wife and I visted twenty years ago we were the only tourists.

Feeling a little self-conscious, I approached the immigration desk for arriving foreigners at Auckland International Airport and presented my New Zealand passport.

Before the confused immigration officer could say anything, I explained that I was travelling with my foreign-born wife and nephew, neither of whom spoke English. After some quick questions, the smiling officer stamped our passports and we were free to go. As we walked away the officer called after me, "welcome home!"

Our New Zealand itinerary was a mixture of family visits and retracing the steps my wife and I had taken twenty years previously - my wife had not been back to New Zealand since. For my nephew, everything was new.

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Since we communicated between ourselves in Portuguese, locals presumed we were just one more group of tourists, myself included.

What follows are some of our impressions of New Zealand during our January 2017 visit.

New Zealand is the land of carpets: My wife’s first impression of New Zealand this time was stepping into the arrival hall at Auckland International Airport and seeing miles and miles of carpet. We soon learnt that New Zealand is a land of carpets.

We got to walk on some very plush ones, particularly in private residences and motels but were surprised just how threadbare some of them were in some popular tourist attractions. The worst carpets we saw were on the Cook Strait ferry Kaiarahi. As all the seats were vomit-stained it did not take a lot of imagination to speculate just how clean the carpets were!

Bare feet: Everywhere we went, we saw locals walking around without footwear - this included Queen St in Auckland.

New Zealand co-inhabitants: If you thought cats and dogs are "Kiwis' best friends", think again! Little spiders are! We saw them in people’s homes, churches, banks, shops and most amazingly on car grills.

My nephew speculated that the ones on cars were because people drive so slowly. I was able to disprove his theory when travelling at 100kmh in our rental, I noticed a little spider crawl out from behind the wing mirror, abseil halfway down the glass, sunbathed there for a while then casually climbed its way back home.

Cost of living: After reading how expensive New Zealand is, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that the cost of many of the same products we buy at home are 30 per cent to 50 per cent cheaper in New Zealand. Even houses in Auckland are cheap from our perspective.

Road conditions: A lot has been written about the foreign tourists and their ability to drive on New Zealand roads. As someone who was once accustomed to driving on South Island roads, I was shocked to rediscover just how bad they were and how little investment they have had over the last twenty years.

They are narrow, have no shoulder, full of one-way bridges, badly sign-posted and badly engineered. If one enters a corner at even slightly above the recommended speed, you are thrown into the opposite lane. Instead of complaining about the way tourists drive, fix the roads.

Public toilets: I have visited cleaner toilets in third world countries. If you are going to build toilets, but don’t have a budget to clean them, then don’t build the toilet in the first place. It is understandable why tourists prefer to use the bush.

Helping to get a bargain: On various occasions, we were given discounts without even asking. On other occasions, we were told how to buy things in different combinations to get additional savings. To us, this seemed strange, but it was a delightful custom.

Friendliness: At the beginning, we suspected the friendly way we were treated as tourists was because people were interested in relieving us of our tourist dollars. We soon discovered the friendliness was real. The level of professionalism of the people we came in contact with was above average, especially in Queenstown.

Top marks to the three art galleys we visited there. Even though it was obvious were not going to buy the NZ$100,000 plus paintings on offer, the friendly staff took time out to explain everything about the canvasses we liked.

Lasting impression: As we took off on the plane for home, my wife turned to me and said: "I wonder if the 0.06 per cent of the world’s population that is made up of Kiwis realise just how special New Zealand really is".