New Zealand South Island Road Trips Kaikoura| Punakaiki| Otago| Mackenzie Basin| Akaroa| Travel

New Zealand’s South Island hosts the purest natural landscapes you’ll ever experience.New Zealand’s South Island is renowned for its mountains, lakes, glaciers, ski fields and hiking trails. Divided by the Southern Alps mountain range, it’s home to Aoraki Mt. Cook and several national parks. Eastern Christchurch is a garden city recovering after earthquakes in 2010 and 2011. The TranzAlpine scenic railway crosses the Southern Alps from Christchurch to Greymouth. Kaikoura /kaɪˈkɔːrə/ is a town on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand. It is located on State Highway 1, 180 km north of Christchurch. Punakaiki is a small community on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand, between Westport and Greymouth. The community lies on the edge of the Paparoa National Park Otago is a southeastern region on New Zealand's South Island. Its terrain encompasses snow-capped mountains, glacial lakes and a rugged peninsula sheltering sandy beaches and wildlife like penguins. Queenstown, a lakeside resort town framed by the dramatic Southern Alps, is famous for adventure sports like bungee jumping and paragliding. Outside Queenstown are dozens of wineries, many specializing in Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. The Mackenzie Basin (popularly and traditionally known as the Mackenzie Country) is an elliptical intermontane basin located in the Mackenzie and Waitaki Districts, near the centre of the South Island of New Zealand. It is the largest such basin in New Zealand.[1] Historically famous mainly for sheep farming, the sparsely populated area is now also a popular tourism destination. The basin was named in the 1850s by and after James Mckenzie (or in his native Scottish Gaelic: Seumas MacCoinneach), a shepherd and sheep thief of Scottish origin, who herded his stolen flocks in what was then an area almost totally empty of any human habitation, thoughMāori previously lived there intermittently. After his capture, the area was soon divided up amongst new sheep pasture stations in 1857. Akaroa is a small town on Banks Peninsula in the Canterbury region of the South Island of New Zealand, situated within a harbour of the same name. New Zealand South Island Road Trips Kaikoura, Punakaiki, Otago, Mackenzie Basin, Akaroa I created this video with the YouTube Video Editor (http://www.youtube.com/editor)