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Tag Archives: South Island

New Zealand mapTake a look at any New Zealand map and you’ll see it looks like two tiny islands in the middle of nowhere.  Situated in the South Pacific Ocean, almost 1000 miles from Australia and about 6,200 miles from both San Francisco and Tokyo, the country of New Zealand is comprised of two main islands, simply named The North Island and The South Island, and a number of smaller islands. A New Zealand map is  roughly the size of a map of Japan, with a total land area of 104,420 sq miles.

Cook Strait cuts a 12 mile gap between the two main islands, with the country’s capital, Wellington, situated on the tip of the New Zealand map. The biggest city is Auckland, which is also on the North Island. Auckland is home to the world’s largest concentration of Polynesian culture. The North Island also has a central plateau region that sees much volcanic and thermal activity.  Traveling from one end of the New Zealand map to to the other will take you from beaches to ocean-view bluffs and everywhere in between!

 

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Although it’s the larger of the two islands, the South Island is much less populated.  The largest city is Christchurch, at only 330,000 inhabitants.  Dunedin is a college town and is smaller yet.

The Southern Alps run down almost the entire spine of the South Island, providing the island with spectacular variety of hiking, with over 200 named peaks topping 7,000 feet.  The island seems to have dual personality, with dry, non-forested land on one side of the mountain range, and lush, rainy, forested lake area on the west side.  Parts of the island are coursing with water, in the form lakes, riers, inlets, bays and fiords.