Egmont/Taranaki

Declared in 1900 — New Zealand's second national park — it protects Mount Taranaki, a stratovolcano of almost perfectly conical form whose symmetry has led to it being used repeatedly as a film double for Japan's Mount Fuji, in productions such as The Last Samurai (2003), shot here rather than in Japan for reasons of logistics and access. In local Māori mythology the volcano was once a member of a family of mountains living in the centre of the North Island alongside Tongariro, until a dispute over love for the mountain Pihanga forced it into exile to the west, leaving behind the deep valley of the Whanganui river that its flight carved into the landscape.