Also on his agenda were meetings with Prime Minister Bill English and Foreign Affairs Minister Gerry Brownlee.
New Zealand is taking an interest in the UK again, mainly because of the decision to leave the European Union, commonly called Brexit.
British Prime Minister Theresa May badly misjudged public sentiment when she called a snap election to cement what she hoped would be a significant majority to negotiate with the EU. Instead, she is in a much weaker position and is just hanging on to her job because no-one else seems to want it.
If politicians in New Zealand believed Mr Johnson was coming to the Land of the Long White Cloud to provide some reinforcement about how important New Zealand is to Britain, they were sadly mistaken. It is difficult to even understand why Mr Johnson visited in the first place, other than to visit Kaikoura, eat cray- fish, crack jokes about the traditional Maori greeting and talk in vague terms.
Mr Johnson suggested New Zealand was at the top of the list for a free-trade agreement with the UK, but that will have to wait until after the drawn-out negotiations on Brexit are concluded. He also suggested Britain could look at introducing some sort of special visa for Commonwealth countries once the process of leaving the EU was complete.
As recently as last week, Kiwis seeking to go to Britain for a working holiday found their plans rudely interrupted when visa processing was not carried out quickly enough. People who paid extra money for urgent visas, supposed to take 10 days to process, found they were waiting 30 to 40 days. Some visas are taking seven to eight weeks. People going to the UK on the two-year working holiday visa are having to cancel flights and rearrange their jobs.
But Mr Johnson assured the country it is one of the great exporters of human capital, something the UK massively values. Obviously, the UK will look at doing a deal to make sure it is going to be able to maximise those advantages, he says. But there will be no details until the UK has extricated itself from ''the toils of the EU system''.
Mr Brownlee welcomed further engagement between New Zealand and the UK, saying the establishment of a people-to-people dialogue was announced by Mr Johnson's visit. Exactly what other dialogue is available, apart from people talking to other people, was not specified.
The so-called people-to-people dialogue is set to provide a forum for discussing a wide range of issues of mutual interest, including how the opportunities existing for citizens to work and live in each other's countries can be improved.
Just reading social media will give Mr Brownlee a fair idea of how badly New Zealanders are being treated in the UK, without the need for any talking.
The UK is New Zealand's fifth-largest trading partner and one of its closest international security partners, along with Australia, Canada and the United States - the Five Eyes network. Lately, it has been difficult to not think at least three of those countries, but particularly Australia and the UK, have gone out of their way to be obstructive to New Zealand's interests.
The Government has continued with its quest for a Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement without the US as President Donald Trump continues to lay down some strict rules for any North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) negotiations.
Mr Brownlee will provide glowing reports from the visit of Mr Johnson when he is really glossing over what is becoming an ever increasing difficult relationship between New Zealand and the UK.
