Geography
New Zealand comprises two main islands (called the North and South Islands in English, Te Ika a Maui and Te Wai Pounamu in Māori) and a number of smaller islands located near the centre of the water hemisphere. The North and South Islands are separated by the Cook Strait, which is 20km wide at its narrowest point. The total land area, 268,680 square kilometres (103,738 sq mi), is a little less than that of Italy and Japan, and a little more than the United Kingdom. The country extends more than 1,600 kilometres (1,000 miles) along its main, north-north-east axis, with approximately 15,134 km (9,404 mi) of coastline. The most significant of the smaller inhabited islands include Stewart Island/Rakiura; Waiheke Island, in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf; Great Barrier Island, east of the Hauraki Gulf; and the Chatham Islands, named Rēkohu by Moriori. The country has extensive marine resources, with the seventh-largest Exclusive Economic Zone in the world, covering over four million square kilometres (1.5 million sq mi), more than 15 times its land area.
The South Island is the largest land mass of New Zealand, and is divided along its length by the Southern Alps, the highest peak of which is Aoraki/Mount Cook at 3754 metres (12,320 ft). There are eighteen peaks over 3,000 metres (10,000 ft) in the South Island. The North Island is less mountainous than the South, but is marked by volcanism. The highest North Island mountain, Mount Ruapehu (2,797 m / 9,177 ft), is an active cone volcano. The dramatic and varied landscape of New Zealand has made it a popular location for the production of television programmes and films, including the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the The Last Samurai.
The country owes its varied topography, and perhaps even its emergence above the waves, to the dynamic boundary it straddles between the Pacific and Indo-Australian Plates. New Zealand is part of Zealandia, a continent nearly half the size of Australia that is otherwise almost completely submerged. About 25 million years ago, a shift in plate tectonic movements began to pull Zealandia apart forcefully, with this now being most evident along the Alpine Fault and in the highly active Taupo volcanic zone.
New Zealand from space. The snow-capped Southern Alps dominate the South Island, while the North Island’s Northland Peninsula stretches towards the subtropics
New Zealand is culturally and linguistically part of Polynesia, and constitutes the south-western anchor of the Polynesian Triangle.