GEOGRAPHY NEW ZEALAND

New Zealand consists of two main islands, North island and South island, plus smaller ones of which Stewart Island is the largest. A variety of awesome landscapes, spectacular glaciers, Ruged Mountains, vast plains, rolling hillsides, subtropical forests, volcanic plateau and gorgeous sandy beaches is all found here.
New Zealand sits on two tectonic plates---the Pacific and the Australian. The North Island and some of the parts of South Island sit on the Australian plate, while rest of the South Island sits on the Pacific. Because of the shifting and grinding of the plates into each other, New Zealand gets a lot of geological action, in the form of volcanoes, earthquakes and other natural hazards. The existence of a ‘spine’ of mountain ranges throughout New Zealand is also due to the movements of the earth’s tectonic plates.
South Islanders Sometimes jokingly refer to South Island as “the Mainland” since it is larger than the North Island.

Rotorua the centre of geothermal tourist activity was the settlement of Maoris and had attracted European residents with its mud pools, geysers and hot springs and its ‘Sulphur City’ smell, and especially seeing the Maori using the hot springs for cooking and bathing. The reputed health benefits of its hot pools earned the area the name of ‘Cure land’.

New Zealand has a long varied and beautiful coastline with long sandy beaches in the north and east coast of the North Island that is perfect for swimming, surfing and sunbathing, while the west coast has dark sandy beaches, with sand heavy in iron.
New Zealand’s Southern Alps have a number of glaciers, the largest being Tasman glacier. The most famous glaciers are the Franz Josef and Fox.

The climate throughout the country is mild, mostly cool to warm temperate, with temperatures falling rarely below zero degree centigrade. It is wet and cold on the West Coast of the South Island and dry and continental in the Mackenzie Basin and subtropical in Northland. Of the main cities, Christchurch is the driest, and Auckland is the wettest, receiving twice the amount of rain per year.

The natural resources of New Zealand are: natural gas, iron ore, sand, coal, timber, hydropower, gold and limestone.