New Zealand’s landscape is nothing short of remarkable, encompassing a diverse range of natural features from soaring mountains and lush rainforest to golden beaches, glaciers and fiords.

In recent years, Mt Taranaki stood in for Japan’s Mt Fuji in The Last Samurai (with Tom Cruise) and the Southern Alps became the Himalayas for Vertical Limit. For visitors, that same diversity means they can enjoy strolling along a sun-warmed beach in the morning, stop at a highly regarded winery for lunch and be hiking along an alpine trail by the afternoon. Nowhere else in the world can visitors experience the sort of exuberant abundance of different landscapes that exist in New Zealand.

As an island nation, nowhere in New Zealand is very far from the sea and that means the coastline features high on the list of what makes the landscape unique. Straddling the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean, and situated at a point where tropical currents from the north converge with polar currents from the south, the waters around New Zealand are home to a wealth of marine species – including several types of seals, dolphins and mighty whales. And in New Zealand, visitors can get closer to these remarkable animals than they would ever have imagined possible. How about spotting a seal colony right alongside a main State Highway, swimming with dolphins or watching whales surface from the comfort of a purpose-designed vessel, just off the coast of Kaikoura in the South Island?

Back on land, New Zealand’s coastline varies from pretty golden-sand beaches that will tempt visitors to prop up a shady umbrella, unfold a deckchair and relax awhile, to rugged coastlines rimmed with slate-grey cliffs that echo the crashing surf of an endless ocean. Throughout the summer months, the beaches of Northland, The Coromandel and the Bay of Plenty are often spectacularly fringed with red-flowering Pohutukawa – the much-loved native ‘Christmas Tree’ in a nation where Christmas falls in mid-summer! Visitors who enjoy boating will find paradise in the Bay of Islands, studded with dozens of emerald-green islands, in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf, right on the doorstep of New Zealand’s largest city, and in the Marlborough Sounds, where ancient sunken valleys provide a bush-cloaked backdrop for sheltered boating.

Walkers flock to Abel Tasman National Park, in the northwest of the South Island, to enjoy the unique pleasure of hiking a gentle coastal trail through forest that comes right down to sandy coves lapped by aquamarine waters. At the other end of the South Island, Fiordland National Park offers a very different experience – hiking amidst a rugged but astonishingly beautiful landscape of waterfalls, rainforest-clad cliffs and deep fiords, a landscape so rare and precious that it is protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Area. A little further north along the South Island’s western coastline, South Westland is home to two of the Southern Hemisphere’s most accessible temperate zone glaciers – seemingly defying the rules of nature, the blue-white rivers of ice at Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers are fringed by the dark green of a temperate rainforest. Visitors can easily walk to the glaciers, or they may join a guided glacier hike or climb to see these remarkable natural phenomena right up close.

There are a number of other glaciersurther inland at Mt Cook National Park. A flight-seeing expedition is an excellent way to see them in the context of the rugged Southern Alps, lorded over by New Zealand’s highest peak – Mt Cook. The Southern Alps, the South Island’s mountainous backbone, rise over 3,000 metres to divide east and west of the island and contribute to a very distinct climate pattern – wetter in the west and drier on the eastern plains. Toward their southern end, the Mackenzie Country and Central Otago are unforgettable regions tucked right in amongst the mountains and home to some of New Zealand’s most popular visitor destinations; lakeside resorts such as Wanaka, Queenstown and Lake Tekapo that offer a high standard of facilities and outdoor activities in a ruggedly beautiful alpine landscape.

In the North Island, too, iconic mountains dominate certain parts of the landscape. Mt Taranaki, on the North Island’s west coast, is an almost perfect cone rising ostentatiously from gently rolling hills – when capped with a white frosting of snow in winter, the sight is quite remarkable. In the Central North Island is a high-altitude plateau where the main north-south State Highway becomes the so-called Desert Road as it crosses a bleak landscape of wide plains overlooked by a forbidding triad of volcanoes. The tallest of these, Mt Ruapehu, is home to the North Island’s most popular ski resort and stood in as ‘Mt Doom’ in The Lord of the Rings.

North of Ruapehu, visitors can easily encounter further evidence of the ways in which incredibly powerful geothermal forces have shaped New Zealand’s landscape. The sparkling waters of Lake Taupo, New Zealand’s largest lake (bigger in area than Singapore), are popular for boating, fishing and swimming in summer, but these tranquil pastimes belie the violence of the lake’s history – Lake Taupo owes its existence to a massive long-ago volcanic eruption. These days, the region stretching from Lake Taupo north to Rotorua in the Bay of Plenty is justifiably popular with visitors wanting to catch a glimpse of the earth’s geothermal forces at play. A thin crust in this part of the North Island results in a remarkable array of geothermal features, from bubbling mud pools to powerful steam vents and geysers, as well as soothing thermal pools at a number of spa complexes.

From North to South Island and beyond to the more than 700 offshore islands that make up this archipelago, New Zealand offers a diversity of geology, climate, flora and fauna that is, quite simply, astonishing. For visitors seeking to experience a variety of landscapes in which to enjoy hiking, boating, wildlife encounters and other outdoor experiences, there is no other place on Earth quite like it.

Unforgettable Sights

The Bay of Islands An island-studded maritime playground in Northland.

Sky Tower At 328 metres, this is the tallest tower in the Southern Hemisphere.

Cathedral Cove White sand and sparkling water in a secluded Coromandel setting.

White Island An actively steaming off-shore volcano in the Bay of Plenty.

Waitomo Caves Underground rivers and caverns studded with glow-worms.

Rotorua Mud Pools Bubbling evidence of the earth’s powerful defining forces.

Lake Taupo and Huka Falls New Zealand’s largest lake and a thunderous waterfall.

Central North Island Volcanoes A triad of volcanoes rising from the plain.

Mt Taranaki The near-perfect cone of a lone sentinel in the western North Island.

Palliser Bay Ruggedly beautiful coastal landscape in the rural Wairarapa.

Marlborough Sounds Bush-clad hills shelter quiet coves in these drowned valleys.

Abel Tasman National Park Coastal paradise of golden beaches and green forest.

Farewell Spit The world’s longest natural sand spit stretches 35 kilometres out to sea.

Punakaiki Pancake Rocks Coastal rock formations and dramatic tidal blowholes.

Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers Rivers of ice snaking down valleys cloaked in rainforest.

Mackenzie Country Lakes Suspended glacial deposits turn these lakes aquamarine.

Mt Cook New Zealand’s highest peak stands 3,754 metres tall.

Catlins Coast Beautiful coastal landscape of forest, waterfalls and ocean cliffs.

Bluff Windswept views at the not-quite-southernmost tip of mainland New Zealand.

Skippers Canyon A rugged link to the gold-mining era near Queenstown.

Fiordland Deep and dark fiords surrounded by steep cliffs, waterfalls and rainforest and home to lots of incredible wildlife.