Nzst.co.nz Private limousine tours on South Island and North Island
Title
New Zealand Splendeur Tours countrywide luxury tours with private chauffeur
Description
A glimpse of New Zealand - by New Zealand Splendeur Tours http://nzst.co.nz
New Zealand stretches north and south a thousand miles. The northern end of the North Island is a long finger of land - much of it sandy - stretching out into the vast emptiness of the Pacific. To the south, the land thickens and rises into broken hills. The sea comes in in deep bays and indentations. The warm waters abound in fish, some of them the spectacular big game fish-swordfish, mako shark - sought after by sportsmen with time and money to spare. This area has acquired its own name, by right of usage, Northland. Here, in our time, as in times past, the relationship with the sea is closer than anywhere else in New Zealand (except possibly the Marlborough Sounds). Sheltered waters, where they are not fenced round with mangrove thickets, and off shore islands -above all the genial climate -encourage an amphibious existence which is, anyway, traditional. Northland has always carried a large Maori population and today the proportion is higher than in most parts of New Zealand. The Maori has traditionally lived by the sea. Here the Nga Puhi tribe still lives, inhabiting often the sites made historic not only by their own vigorous wars, but given a special interest for us by the visits of the early navigators - Cook, de Surville, the ill-fated Marion du Fresne.
Auckland with more than one million people is our largest city. It rejoices in a magnificent situation, astride an isthmus, between two good harbours. The better of these - the Waitemata - is of rather similar conformation to Sydney, but if it is smaller than Sydney, it has outside it many miles of sheltered waters in the Hauraki Gulf, where the yachtsman can manoeuvre without too much anxiety.
Further south the land rises to the central plateau of the North Island, through areas still heavily bushed, to pumice lands only recently made suitable for farming purposes.
Nearby is Lake Taupo, bordering on a region of deep forest that stretches to the north and east into the Kaimanawa Range; one of the most considerable fragments remaining of the great forests of the past. Taupo is much beloved of fishermen, but the trout introduced into its waters have multiplied to the extent that they have prejudiced their own food supply.
This area is rich in tourist attractions. The volcanic plateau has rewarding experiences for the skier, as well as for less strenuous people, who merely contemplate its surprising contours. Further north, halfway to the coast, is the Rotorua area, the most developed of a number of places where thermal activity offers its sometimes disconcerting attractions. Here are rivers of hot water; geysers which spout at intervals; hot pools where the Maori dangle their pots and leave their food to cook alfresco, and lakes stocked with fish. Those waters which have medicinal properties have been piped and are offered the visitor in a glass. Pools which can help those with rheumatic and similar complaints are tidily confined to bath-houses where they can be enjoyed discreetly. Rotorua and the nearby Maori village of Whakarewarewa show off these attractions.
Wellington, the Capital City of New Zealand with its satellite urban growth in the Hutt Valley and in various pockets of the dominating hills, found its situation from its harbour. There is not a great deal of flat land and even though this has been supplemented by much reclamation from the sea, the main streets of the town are narrow and twisting.
The tourist attractions of the North Island all have some flavour of the unique. They are splendid freaks. The South Island, with its high mountain ranges and wild, hill-ringed lakes, offers more magnificent scenery on a grander scale.
One of the great sheep-farming districts of New Zealand, Canterbury is also the most important source of wheat. North Canterbury, the foothills and the uplands of the Mackenzie Country support merino sheep pre-eminently on large, often lonely holdings, These stretch back to the head waters of great rivers "with proud Maori names" - Waimakariri, Rakaia, Rangitata - and the glaciers of the Southern Alps, probably the greatest scenic asset New Zealand possesses. On the closely-settled plains crops such as wheat and barley are combined with the fattening of lambs.
The Canterbury slopes are comparatively treeless, but the western flanks of the Southern Alps carry luxuriant forests. The West Coast, a narrow strip of plain fenced in by the ranges, which drop steeply from ten thousand feet nearly to sea-level in twenty miles, is not easily reached from Canterbury. In gold rush days the best communication was by sea. This isolation and peculiarity of occupation - there is some dairy and cattle farming, much coal-mining, a little surviving gold-seeking - give the West Coast its own atmosphere. The climate is notorious for its rainfall; the people are renowned for their hospitality and the rather Irish good-fellowship, in part expressing itself in an inordinate number of public houses. The great timber trees are less accessible than in earlier years, but saw-milling is still an important activity. In the far south, seals bask on the rocks and white bait come up the rivers in helpless shoals. This is New Zealand's "frontier" where conditions are still, in spite of excellent air transport, more primitive than in most other parts of the country.
Capital of Otago Province is Dunedin. Like Wellington, it is confined by its hills to a narrow plain. Many of its streets, like Wellington's, climb steeply. The long harbour, with Port Chalmers halfway, has a dredged channel by which overseas ships can reach berths alongside the main business area of the town. The two sides of this inlet, both with roads passing along their crests, provide superb views of the water, and the town at its head. As has been mentioned, Dunedin was more important commercially in the past than in the present, so that many of the most imposing buildings, including the fine railway station, are of respectable age. But the business enterprise which made the city still pulses vigorously.
Stewart Island, a few hours' stormy crossing from Bluff, is New Zealand's most important off-shore island. It is still largely bush-covered. Its few hundred inhabitants are occupied in fishing and in a deserved tourist trade from nearby Southland. The island has great beauty and a sense of peace and remoteness.
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