Cuba vs New Zealand

New Zealand is 2.4 times larger than Cuba — 268,838 against 110,860 km². Cuba is 2.1 times more populous than New Zealand — 10,937,203 against 5,324,700 people.

Side by side

Population density

Cuba is 5.0 times more densely populated than New Zealand — 99 against 20 people per km². Density is where area and population interact, and it often reverses the impression the headline figures give — a large country with a small population can feel emptier than a small crowded one by an enormous margin.

Practical differences

• They drive on opposite sides — Cuba on the right, New Zealand on the left.
• Different currencies: the Cuban peso and the New Zealand dollar.
• New Zealand spans 2 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.
• Different continents — North America and Oceania.

Cuba

The largest island in the Caribbean, roughly 1,250 km long but as little as 31 km wide. The Viñales valley in the west is a karst landscape of mogotes — steep limestone humps left standing when the rock around them dissolved. The bee hummingbird, the smallest bird in the world at about 5 cm, lives only here.

New Zealand

Two main islands and around 600 smaller ones, roughly 1,600 km long. New Zealand broke away from Gondwana about 80 million years ago and had no land mammals except bats until people arrived, which is why so many of its birds are flightless. The Southern Alps run most of the South Island and reach 3,724 m at Aoraki / Mount Cook.

Neutral facts only. Nothing here addresses politics, government, economics or which country is preferable in any respect — population is the one figure that dates, and it carries its year.