Why is New Zealand made good to you?

The more I hike overseas, the more I become convince that NZ conditions are not that unique, if you get off the tourist tracks the routes in North America and Europe are just as rough and overgrown as anything you can find in New Zealand. Plus, the weather can be even more extreme and variable in many places.

A big thing that makes NZ more benign than some other places is the presence of so many huts. There's not many times and places you get up at first light from a nasty wet and or cold /snowy fly camp and couldn't be in a hut with a fire going before nightfall that day. OK, there's the west of Lake Te Anau and the Olivines country but usually you're within 24 hours of a hut. The thing that struck me when I read a couple of blogs by North Americans doing the Te Araroa with ultra lightweight gear wasn't issues with the adequacy or otherwise of the gear they had for the conditions but the inadequacy of their understanding of the dangers of river crossings and strategies around them. Both were very experienced long distance hikers, had done thousands of km in other parts of the world, both had had serious swept away incidents on their NZ trips and didn't seem to have taken the necessary lessons from the experience.

North American TA hikers (who have done AT and others) also say that they go through their footwear a lot quicker, so that would seem to indicate the terrain itself is more technical.

Gaiters, here's Philip Werner's comment: http://sectionhiker.com/sierra-designs-lightning-2-fl-tent-review/#comment-110961 Quote: "My working theory is that tents made by companies based in Colorado (and out west) usually don’t work well for the muggy, damp East Coast and Appalachia. They just don’t get it and they certainly don’t test it."