Reign of Error - Aotearoa

Artist's Palette - Waiotapu, just outside Rotorua

Rotorua is situated in a huge volcanic caldera which is the source of wide-ranging geothermal activity in and around the town. Boiling mud pits, bubbling hot sulphur pools, neon green lakes and belching geysers cover the land. A visually wonderous, though often foul-smelling region (the sulphur smells like rotten eggs). Breathe through your mouth and let your eyeballs revel in the sublime kaleidoscopic landscape.

Artist's Palette and Champagne Pool

Champagne Pool

Lake Ngakoro (left) and the edge of Champagne Pool (right)

The Devil's Bath

Bubbling mud at Hell's Gate (Tikitere) - Rotorua

Mount Aoraki and the surrounding region are the result of millennia-old glacial activity, which is still in motion to this day, sculpting the landscape and responsible for the recent appearance of Tasman Lake.

Nearby Lake Pukaki gets its luminous powder-blue hue from 'glacial flour,' extremely finely ground rock particles created by the colossal weight of ice scouring the landscape.

Lake Pukaki - The glacial flour in the water only reflects blue light, hence the colour

Glacial Ice, Tasman Lake

Glacial ice and icebergs, Tasman Lake

Tasman Lake is formed by glacial meltwater and only began to form in the 1970s

Sunset and moonrise over Mount Aoraki, the largest mountain in New Zealand

Mount Aoraki is part of the Southern Alps on the South Island

The small coastal town of Kaikoura is home to an abundance of marine life, including whales, dolphins and fur seals. Sparkling turquoise waters add to the allure and draw in even the most committed of landlubbers.

Dusky dolphins (above and below) - Several hundred call the coastal waters of Kaikoura home

The Forgotten World Highway, aka State Highway 43, is ranked as one of the ten worst roads to drive by the local police, mainly due to the winding, slippery gravel-surfaced road at Tangarakau Gorge. The distracting, jaw-dropping scenery may also be a reason. It's definitely worth risking the drive for. Verdant green hills and dark and mysterious forest await the explorer.

Strathmore Saddle with Mount Taranaki in the distance

State Highway 43 (aka the Forgotten World Highway) and Tahora Saddle

Driving the SH43 south from Taumarunui brings you to the dormant volcano that is Mount Taranaki

Along the Otago coastline, on Koekohe beach, are the mysteriously spherical Moeraki Boulders. Over fifty are scattered along the shore, with more being slowly freed by erosion from entombment in the adjoining cliffs.

Boulders range in size from 0.5 metres to 2.2 metres in diameter, with most being almost perfectly spherical. They were naturally formed as spheres, much like pearls are in oysters

The boulders are composed of mud, fine silt and clay, cemented by calcite. Stones visible today were all originally buried in the mudstone cliffs, with erosion eventully freeing them. Some boulders are still fully or partly trapped (left)

The boulders started to form around 60 million years ago during the Paleocene epoch, on an ancient sea floor. The largest boulders took 4 million years to form.

In the tiny coastal town of Te Araroa you will find an ancient, sprawling pohutukawa tree, thought to be the largest in New Zealand. Called Te Waha-o-Rerekohu, it may also be the oldest too, at around 600 years old. With an almost arcane and otherworldly feel to it, it's hard not to imagine you've time-slipped into a more primordial and aborial past

Milford Sound / Piopiotahi is part of the vast and largely unexplored Fiordland wilderness on South Island. Despite the name it's actuallly a fiord, a flooded glacial valley that runs 15km inland from the Tasman Sea. Near vertical rock faces tower overhead on all sides, with some of the highest peaks soaring to over 4900ft. Thunderous waterfalls cascade from many of these vertiginous heights, adding to the monumental aura of a place Rudyard Kipling once described as the eighth wonder of the world.

Some of the spectacular waterfalls are permanent whilst others are a transient by-product of the frequent torrential downpours the region is known for. It's reckon that Milford Sound is the wettest place in New Zealand, if not the world

Milford Sound was 'discovered' in 1823 by Welshman John Grono who named it after his birthplace of Milford Haven. Piopiotahi is the Maori name. Piopio is an extinct bird and tahi means 'one', the overall name relating to the legend of a single piopio bird flying to the fiord after the death of Maui, a mythological figure in Maori culture

The Otago Peninsula is a jagged finger of land that juts out eastwards from the city of Dunedin (South Island). The landmass forms the southern border of Otago Harbour and is largely covered in undulating hills, coastal inlets and wind-swept beaches. Sheep and cows freely roam open pasture inland, with coastal regions home to seals and albatross.

Sandfly Bay, home to sand dunes and New Zealand sea lions (and the odd seagull)

Near the small west-coast community of Punakaiki (South Island) are the strange geological formations known as the Pancake Rocks. Situated south of the town at Dolomite Point, the finlely layered limestone stacks formed around 30 million years ago when the land was deep underwater. Seismic activity evetually raised the land above sea-level, with the elements gradually eroding the rock into the 'pancakes' we see now.

The pancake layering is due to the composition of the limestone. When forming, water pressure caused alternating layers of hard limestone and softer, mud-rich layers to solidify. Erosion then caused the softer layers to wear away faster than the harder ones, causing the pancake effect

Salt-water blowholes, the often violent action of the sea and other elemental factors ensure the rocks continue to be sculpted and transformed

There is a multitude of other places throughout New Zealand that seem to defy easy description, giving weight to the oft-used adage 'a picture is worth a thousand words'.

Crossing the Coromandel Peninsula (looking west)

Bay at Whitianga, Coromandel Peninsula, North Island

Bay of Plenty, North Island

Sunset view on the Coastal Pacific Railway, somwhere between Kaikoura and Picton (South Island)

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