New Zealand has a wide variety of terrain within a relatively small area – mountains, lakes, rivers, fiords, gorges, glaciers, volcanoes. Its coastline is long with many types of beaches. A large part of the country has golden sands.

Click here for a map of New Zealand, or here for Weather Statistics of 10 regions around the country (PDF file).

Can't read the file? See note below...

In the sub-tropical north of the North Island (eg Bay of Islands) there are white sands and clear water. In the South Island there are rugged coastlines (eg Kaikoura) and special features such as the blowholes at Punakaiki on the West Coast of that island. The west coasts of both islands have black sand beaches, while the Marlborough Sounds and Fiordland coasts are fiords with narrow beachlines and deep bays.

The major mountain region in the South Island is the Southern Alps. New Zealand’s highest mountain is Aoraki / Mount Cook, which is 3754 metres (12,316ft) high. In the South Island lakes district are the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers which flow close to the sea.

The central North Island has three main volcanoes – Ruapehu (2796m, 9175ft), Ngauruhoe (2290m, 7515ft) and Tongariro (1968m, 6517ft). To the west of them is Taranaki (Mount Egmont) (2518m, 8260ft).

There are eight major lakes in the South Island. The largest is Te Anau (344 square kilometres, 133 square miles), followed by Wakatipu (at Queenstown) and Wanaka. New Zealand’s largest lake is Taupo in the North Island, which extends over 606 square kilometres (232 square miles). It is the crater of an extinct volcano.

The central North Island is a volcanic plateau with areas of thermal activity, hot springs, mud pools and geysers, particularly around Rotorua.

Limestone caves at Waitomo on the west coast of the North Island are another special feature.
New Zealand also has a variety of rivers, from the wide braided ones flowing through the flat land of the Canterbury Plains (Rakaia, Waimakariri), to the swift flowing waterways in deep gorges such as the Shotover and the Clyde in Central Otago, to the Waikato, a wide river with gentle bends flowing through rich pasture land, and the Whanganui, which has thick native bush down to its banks.

There are areas of native forest in the West Coast of the South Island, the Nelson area, the eastern North Island and kauri forests in the north of the North Island. Large exotic forests, mainly pine, can be found in the centre of the North Island, near Taupo and Rotorua.

The diversity of landscape and vegetation means that in a short journey it is possible to pass through all of the following: dune sands and dune vegetation, coastal forest and sub-tropical rainforest, high-rainfall beech forests, lowland swamp forest and open lowland swamps and bog, sub-alpine grasslands and scrub lands, alpine herbfields and moorlands, alpine barrens of rock, snow and ice, dry beech forest and scrub lands, and semi-arid grasslands.

Four of the most popular locations in the mountain regions are Mount Ruapehu (North Island); Coronet Peak/The Remarkables, Cardrona/Treble Cone and Aoraki/Mount Cook (all South Island).

For further information on New Zealand locations contact a local production manager.