New Zealand

Islands and relief of New Zealand:

New Zealand is a well developed country, but pretty isolated from the rest of the world and the two main islands that compound it are separated by the Cook Strait. The relief is a little different, although both islands present mountainous areas, the South Island is more than 70% covered by the Southern Alps with the maximum height in Aoraki or Cook Mountain of 3.754 m height comparative with the North Island which is more than 50% covered with volcanic mountains which modeled this region through their volcanic activity during millions of years.

Otherwise, The country’s landscape is varied and very attractive, starting with the coast areas very fragmented where tourists can see fjords and beautiful beaches, continuing with coastal fertile and boggy plains to high mountains on the South Island which are covered by glaciers. These enchanting landscapes attracted tourists and also movie producers and the well known Lord of the Rings series was recorded here. The North Island with its volcanic activity includes active volcanoes and geysers.

Climate, fauna and flora, agriculture and resources:

The country’ s climate varies according to location and elevation. Generally it’s temperate with oceanic influences, powerful winds and a constant rainfall. The summers are hot with temperatures over 30º C and the winters are cold when the temperature can go below 0º C. A large part of the territory is forested and New Zealand hides a large variety of fauna and flora (Kiwi bird is the National Symbol in this country). (Find more journeys on blog.worldlifetimejourneys.com) The most part of the inhabitants work in agriculture as one of the best developed in the world and cultivate wheat, vine, barley, potatoes, hop, pulses, fruits (one of the world’s best producers) and vegetables, but they also grow millions of sheep, goats, cattle and pigs for food and for wool. New Zealand has large resources of coal, natural gas, oil and metals.

Industries, tourism and population from New Zealand:

The most important New Zealand industries from the last decades are forestry, fishing, production of electricity, production and export of the diary products, meat and wool, timber and paper production industries. But above all is the tourism developing in a quick way at the end of the last century. New Zealand is annually visited by more than 2 million tourists who come here for the enchanting landscapes and the pleasant warm climate during summer time, for the generous and sociable people, for the unique fauna and flora and for the Maori culture, the first inhabitants of these regions who came here from Polynesia (today they are under 55.000) and later on appeared the European colonizers. The country obtained the independency from Great Britain at 17 January 1853. Visit New Zealand!

Beautiful Lake Wanaka from New Zealand