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Oceania : New Zealand : North Island

North Island

The North Island of New Zealand is warm, with scenery ranging from sandy beaches, through rolling farmland to active volcanic peaks. Although it is smaller than the South Island, it is more populous, with half of the New Zealand population living north of Lake Taupo, in the middle of the island.

Regions

Cities

  • Whangarei - The central and only city in Northland
  • Auckland - The largest and most populated NZ city and the largest city in Polynesia.
  • Hamilton - home of the Waikato River.
  • Tauranga - In the Bay of Plenty.
  • Rotorua - Famous for geysers and hot pools... and that funny sulphuric smell! (smells like eggs!)
  • Hastings and Napier - Art Deco and wine in the sunny Hawkes Bay.
  • New Plymouth -
  • Wanganui - Once a port town, now gateway to the Whanganui river
  • Palmerston North - Knowledge capital of New Zealand, has over 70 educational institutes, that roughly one per 1000 population
  • Wellington - The national capital - home of the Parliament and the Beehive. The Windy city (and its not hot air).

Other Destinations

Understand

Talk

Get in

  • Auckland - Is the primary arrival point for most people in New Zealand a large majority of those coming in through the Auckland International Airport (IATA: AKL, ICAO: NZAA) which handles 70% of all tourist air travel and is serviced by most major Airlines. A significant number of people also arrive in Auckland by cruise ship.

Get around

The North Island is adequately serviced by many national bus companies.

  • InterCity Coachlines is New Zealand's national coach company and operates over 150 services to more than 600 destinations nationwide.
  • nakedbus.com is the cheap alternative to Intercity with tickets starting from $1 - book early and get bargin bus travel. They do not have quite as many routes or services as Intercity but are catching up fast.

See

Do

Eat

Drink

Stay safe

Get out

This page was last edited at 05:30, on 21 November 2008 by Jani Patokallio. Based on work by Felix Schaad, Ryan Holliday, Todd VerBeek and Andrew Haggard, Wikitravel user(s) Texugo and Episteme, Anonymous user(s) of Wikitravel and others.