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Tekapo Adventures

Our Scenic 4WD Tours offer you the opportunity to experience The Outstanding Natural Landscapes of The Mackenzie Country, accessed through private High Country Stations surrounding Lake Tekapo.

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Mackenzie Basin New Zealand offers unique and outstanding natural landscapes

Mackenzie Basin New Zealand is a land of stunning changing landscapes. In addition, it delivers the iconic essential features New Zealand is known for. It is the largest intermontane basin within the country and holds many special values and unique landforms found only in the Mackenzie High Country.

Iconic Beauty in Mackenzie Basin New Zealand

It is a timeless beauty and dramatic scenery of flowing velvet-covered hills, desert landscapes, intense light, and its harsh climate. All combine to create an outstanding collection of moods and ever-changing natural beauty. Creative cloud formations dominate the immense, remote space that is like nothing found nowhere else within the South Island.

The iconic scenery of rising snowcapped mountains, deep turquoise tainted lakes, big skies, and the clearest skies in the world encompasses just a part of what makes the Mackenzie Country so stunning.

Mackenzie Country is home to an array of outstanding natural features. In fact, it has recently been recognized nationally for its outstanding natural landscapes. It even made the Government’s Plan Change 13 that provides protection for Mackenzie’s outstanding natural features, landscapes, and ecology. This plan also refers to it as “the highest protection outside conservation land.”

Nothing Else Compares to the Mackensie Basin

Such unique landforms, species and special features which are only within the Mackenzie Basin consist of natural features such as dryland ecosystems, featuring inland alluvial surfaces, inland dunes, moraines, kettle holes , wetlands, red tussocks, and tall tussocks.

Mackenzie Basin New Zealand High

An impressive collection of braided rivers, are a network of ever-changing channels weaving between temporary shingle islands. They run through the valleys with a multitude of deep blues and milky tainted grays, from the dense glacier run offs from the Alpine environment which surrounds the Mackenzie with immense power and beauty.

Mackenzie Basin New Zealand Famed Eco-Tourism

These braided rivers create an important environment for some of the rarest species found within the Mackenzie Basin, also known as one of the most ecologically distinctive areas in New Zealand. The Mackenzie is a stronghold for many rare ecosystems and threatened species of national priority, with New Zealand’s rarest wildlife – plants and animals found nowhere else in the world, along with 40% of Canterbury’s threatened species. They all call the Mackenzie Basin home.

For example, the Australasian crested grebe (nationally-endangered), Australasian bittern (nationally-endangered), and banded dotterel (gradual decline). Also, the black-fronted tern (nationally-endangered), black stilt (nationally-critical), black shag (sparse), and black-billed gull (serious decline). Other endangered birds include the Caspian tern (nationally-vulnerable), grey duck (nationally- endangered), kea (nationally-endangered), and long-tailed cuckoo (gradual decline). Also on the list are New Zealand falcon (gradual decline), South Island rifleman (gradual decline) and wrybill (nationally-vulnerable).

Come join us for a memorable scenic 4WD tour through New Zealand’s breathtaking heartland of the Mackenzie Country.

Call us!
020 4156 4900