Where is New Zealand, exactly? New Zealand is two islands in the Pacific, but it is not a Pacific Island.

All those islands we normally think of as "Pacific": New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga, the Cook Islands, and Tahiti, lie between 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 covers 270 000 square kilometres. It is:

the size of Burkina Faso, Colorado, Equador, the UK, or the Western Sahara
twice the size of Bangladesh, Fujian Province (China) or Greece
four times the size of Sri Lanka
half the size of Madagascar, France or Kenya
and would fit comfortably into the Caspian or Baltic Seas...


Some geography...

For the sake of convenience, we can divide up the country into 2 degree bands of latitude. Down here, the numbers get bigger as we travel south. And it gets colder. Down here, birds fly NORTH for the winter...

The regions of New Zealand fall into these bands as follows:

34-36 Northland
36-38 Auckland, The Coromandel
38-40 Bay of Plenty, 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 Southern Hemisphere, the regions of New Zealand share their parallels with:


34-36 Buenos Aires, Adelaide and Canberra in Australia, and Cape Town in South Africa (in fact, Cape Town is NORTH of the northern-most point of New Zealand, and Sydney is the same...)
36-38 Auckland and the Coromandel lie in the same band as Melbourne
38-40 Bay of Plenty, Waikato, Hawkes Bay, Manawatu, Taranaki cover large slices of Argentina and Chile
40-42 Wellington, Wairarapa, Marlborough, Nelson - more Chile.
42-44 West Coast, Canterbury (Christchurch) are neighbours with Hobart
44-46 Otago, Southland (Dunedin) is the same as... Patagonia! (just look at the landscapes to see why...)
46-48 more Patagonia...


The Northern Hemisphere

While it"s not an accurate comparison, New Zealand is in the middle of the ocean with no part of it further than 130 kilometres (about 80 miles) from the coast, in the same bands of latitude 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
40-42 Istanbul, 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 you"re heading. All you need to do is get here...