The South Pacific. A vast expanse of ocean, sculpted by fire and sea almost a millennia ago.
A birthplace to thousands of islands, and home to sound the most astonishing and diverse ecosystems on the planet.
Most islands in the South Pacific rarely break above the surrounding ocean.
There is an archipelago however that stands out like no other.
Forested valleys, raging rivers, and glacier-capped peaks. This is New Zealand.
Over a thousand kilometers along with a mountainous spine rising over 2,000 meters above the ocean,
New Zealand proved to be a safe haven for the few plants and birds that settled here over a period of 60 million years.
With colonizers few and far between, today New Zealand is more accessible than ever before.
Drawn in by the island's unique landscape, New Zealand is a gateway to adventures, mountaineers, and explorers alike.
Most of whom start their journey in Auckland.
Home to some 1.3 million people and surrounded by wild coastlines and once fiery volcanoes,
Auckland is a bustling city right in the heart of North Island.
With the dozens of now extinct volcanoes that litter Auckland, it is easy to forget how these islands once formed.
The Naked Eye in North Island is a tropical rainforest surrounded by rolling hills and two very distinct mountains.
These however are not your ordinary peaks. Beneath Lake Topo right in the middle of North Island lies a super volcano.
Over the last 300,000 years this volcano has created some of the Earth's most violent eruptions.
Today however those are just a distant memory.
The volcano sits quietly, breathing slowly through its many springs and geysers attracting tourists from all corners of our planet.
Venturing further south still, the largest mountain range in the Pacific stands out like a rock wall extending over 2,000 meters into the air.
The largest of them all being Mount Cook, a glacier capped peak standing right in the middle of the tropical Pacific.
Mount Cook and the surrounding mountains trap most of the moisture coming from the west.
In the lower elevations this precipitation falls as rain, up to 10 meters of it.
As lush tropical rainforests dominate the western flanks of these peaks, further up above them this rain falls as snow.
Up to 14 meters of snow cover parts of the southern Alps, giving way to some truly unique landscapes.
Meltwater from these ancient glaciers are to this day the lifeblood of this island.
Feeding its many rivers both to the west and to the east, these glaciers carved and shaped New Zealand into the unique paradise that it is today.
The paradise surrounded by the wild Pacific, a home to the few that have managed to make it this far.
Mount Cook and the surrounding mountains are to this day the lifeblood of these glaciers.
Mount Cook and the surrounding mountains are to this day the lifeblood of this island.
Mount Cook and the surrounding mountains are to this day the lifeblood of these glaciers.
