Where Are The Regions of New Zealand?
Where is New Zealand, exactly? New Zealand is two islands in thePacific, but it is not a Pacific Island.
All those islands we normally think of as “Pacific”: NewCaledonia, Fiji, Tonga, the Cook Islands, and Tahiti, liebetween 15 and 23 degrees South.
They are north of the Tropic of Capricorn…
… New Zealand is south of it. By a long way.
New Zealand stretches from 35 to 47 degrees south, and covers270 000 square kilometres. It is:
the size of Burkina Faso, Colorado, Equador, the UK, or theWestern Sahara twice the size of Bangladesh, Fujian Province(China) or Greece four times the size of Sri Lanka half the sizeof Madagascar, France or Kenya and would fit comfortably intothe Caspian or Baltic Seas…
Some geography…
For the sake of convenience, we can divide up the country into 2degree bands of latitude. Down here, the numbers get bigger aswe travel south. And it gets colder. Down here, birds fly NORTHfor the winter…
The regions of New Zealand fall into these bands as follows:
34-36 Northland 36-38 Auckland, The Coromandel 38-40 Bay ofPlenty, Waikato, Rotorua, Taupo, Eastland, Hawkes Bay,Wanganui-Manawatu, Taranaki 40-42 Wellington, Wairarapa,Marlborough, Nelson 42-44 The West Coast, Canterbury,Christchurch 44-46 Mt Cook-MacKenzie, Wanaka, Queenstown, Otago,Dunedin, Fiordland 46-48 Southland, including Stewart Island
What else can you find at these latitudes?
Following the same bands of latitude around the SouthernHemisphere, the regions of New Zealand share their parallelswith:
34-36 Buenos Aires, Adelaide
and Canberra in Australia, andCape Town in South Africa (in fact, Cape Town is NORTH of thenorthern-most point of New Zealand, and Sydney is the same…)36-38 Auckland and the Coromandel lie in the same band asMelbourne 38-40 Bay of Plenty, Waikato, Hawkes Bay, Manawatu,Taranaki cover large slices of Argentina and Chile 40-42Wellington, Wairarapa, Marlborough, Nelson – more Chile. 42-44West Coast, Canterbury (Christchurch) are neighbours with Hobart44-46 Otago, Southland (Dunedin) is the same as… Patagonia!(just look at the landscapes to see why…) 46-48 morePatagonia…
The Northern Hemisphere
While its not an accurate comparison, New Zealand is in themiddle of the ocean with no part of it further than 130kilometres (about 80 miles) from the coast, in the same bands oflatitude in the Northern Hemisphere you will find (moving north):
34-36 Cyprus, Kabul, Tokyo, Los Angeles 36-38 Seoul, Tunis,Athens, San Francisco 38-40 Ankara, Beijing, Lisbon 40-42Istanbul, Tashkent, Madrid, Rome, New York 42-44 Almaty,Vladivostok, Sofia, Toronto, Boston 44-46 Bordeaux, Milan,Belgrade, Bucharest, Ottowa 46-48 Geneva, Seattle
Now you know where youre heading. All you need to do is gethere…
About the author:
Stephen Hay invites you to explore the opportunities for luxurytravel and accommodation in New Zealand.
The site, http://www.luxury-new-zealand.com/, brings together all luxury offerings in NewZealand.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
