Let's All Just Move to New Zealand

And still I eat lashed myself to a purely journalistic mast-I’m looking, no buying-I eat been forewarned. “Many of our clients desert with sign brochures,” says James Cavanagh, the people general manager of Eichardt’s hotel can Queenstown, one of my planned stops. “Whether they will or they won’t, they anticipate to.” buy into the dream, that is.

“Queen Elizabeth has stayed here four times,” says the general manager of Huka Lodge, pointing out a discreetly placed photograph of the queen and the Duke of Edinburgh can a tiny room with views of lawns and the trout-rich Waikato River. “This is her favorite dining spot.” Huka, can the North Island’s central Lake Taupo region, has launched many a like worry with New Zealand. Its guest books appointment uphold almost 90 years and are filled with the names of “the ordinary, the wealthy, the titled, the celebrated, and the distinguished of many countries.” (This can the words of the biographer of its founder, an avid Irish fly-fisherman named Alan Pye.)

Minutes after my arrival, I’m full in.

To begin with, there’s the breakfast spread. “We eat 38 different suppliers,” says Paul Froggart, the executive chef, adding that “there is a fate of culinary competition can New Zealand.” Huka, which is cavity to diners no staying here-if they’re fortunate enough to score a reservation-features more than 21 dining venues because its 19 suites and two cottages. I am booked can the four-bedroom Owner’s Cottage, across with two friends. We lounge almost above our personal jewel terraces, which eat a pool and warm tub overlooking the Waikato’s short flow of rapids. The understated, down-to-earth luxury of the “cottage” and its cocooning seclusion mean a friendly of Platonic perfect of, well, home.

Domesticity above our minds, we appear up Sotheby’s genuine wealth listings because Lake Taupo. My friends, who are no immune to the siren melody of sign buying opportunities, and I discover 19 “luxury homes” available (prices above request), the photos showcasing floor-to--ceiling windows and terraces with views of shimmering Lake Taupo (from which the Waikato river drains). almost the size of Singapore, the lake occupies a caldera formed 26,500 years ago, while the Taupo supervolcano exploded can the most stormy eruption above dirt can the past, oh, 70,000 years. Its ashy fallout apt contributed to the final Ice Age. Now, that’s genuine wealth with a backstory.

As global favour can proximity to beauty although this has helped send sign values across New Zealand soaring, pricing many locals out of the market, the country’s parliament passed legislation can August prohibiting purchases of existing homes and residential dirt by most foreigners. still full is no lost: The constitution doesn’t use to new condos. Also, buyers can use because exemptions from the Overseas Investment Office if they can certify that their ownership of what’s called “sensitive forestry land” will bring sufficient benefits: creating jobs, enhancing agriculture, or conserving the environment. because one local entrepreneur explains, “With a population beneath 5 million, we don’t eat enough core wealth. We lack foreign sponsorship to motivate development.”

Julian Robertson, because one, is regarded because something of a local hero because his contributions to the economy. His Farm can Cape Kidnappers, above the North Island’s Hawke’s Bay, where I main next, was a 150-year-old disperse fallen above difficult period while he bought it can 2002 because what was described to me because “the charge of a New York apartment.” Robertson père got 6,000 acres of undulating pastureland and woods atop craggy sea cliffs, one of which is family to the world’s largest mainland colony of gannets. It’s trophy genuine wealth above steroids.

He used isolate of the sign to build a state-of-the-art 22-suite inhabit and a world-renowned Tom Doak golf course. (“We eat Chinese clients who fly down by personal plane from Hong Kong, almost nine hours, impartial because four nights,” the golf pro tells me.) still Robertson also revived the farm, with gloomy Angus creature and breeding ewes roaming the well-tended pastures.

In addition he was instrumental can creating the 6,177-acre Cape Sanctuary to recover and defend endangered resident flora and fauna. A 6.6-mile predator wall that extends six feet can base and almost five feet beneath traverses the cape from bank to coast, keeping out rats, rabbits, cats, stoats, weasels, and opossums-invasive classify that arrived with human migrations. (“Cute, still they full cause to die,” a guide says of the opossums, which strip the howl from trees.)

We strut over a protected woods of pines and ferns, the base mild with needles; we shriek on gannets-a complete cliffside squawking and fluttering; and we examine the kiwis, which a researcher charmingly describes because “that lovely, innocent, slightly daft bird of ours.” inner the Cape Sanctuary their survival estimate to breeding period is 85 percent; outside, it’s 5 percent.

By day’s purpose I’m once again above the Sotheby’s site. It extols Hawke’s bay because New Zealand’s premier wine district and its fruit basket. shut Napier is a “much-photographed skill Deco gem.” And Havelock North, precise next door, is “one of the most desirable places to live, with historic homes and tree-lined streets.”

Queenstown, above the South Island, is the outdoor adventure main that gave originate to bungee jumping. It because vigorous draws foreigners, including American tech entrepreneur and chance capitalist Peter Thiel, who bought one of his two New Zealand properties here and is famously rumored to eat installed a terror room can his house. Which, once you’ve spent time can New Zealand, feels although an oddly irrelevant gesture.

The flight here from the North island requires no ID and no security bridle (nor fulfill any domestic flights). above a seat can our row, two vacant wineglasses appear to symbolically toast an period of innocence desire vanished elsewhere. Security is a big isolate of New Zealand’s allure, and it is expressed can many forms: a firm democratic government, cheap crime, abundant energy resources, and forward-thinking environmental policies. “I can drink from any run or waterfall,” a local tells me. And the conventional visibility, according to a aeroplane pilot, “is 50 miles-we eat no pollution.”

The everlasting advice from the terrace of the Penthouse can Eichardt’s, where we linger can Queenstown, looks make-believe: a strip of white sand beach, the intense gloomy of the 50-mile-long Lake Wakatipu (of Lord of the Rings film fame), and full nearly and into the distance, because if -cradling the lake and delineated with startling crispness, the jagged mountains aptly called the Remarkables.

Catching the adrenaline-fueled soul of this place, we main out cycling with John Thomassen, an outdoor guide, nearly shut Arrowtown (population 3,000). Judging by the well-preserved 19th-century houses and the shop-and-restaurant-lined major street, one senses that this center of the 1860s gold dash is can the throes of another boom. “House prices are doubling each three years,” says Thomassen, who does genuine wealth above the side. “They went up 29 percent can 2017 and 25 percent the year before. It’s a good time to exist flipping houses can Arrowtown.” And Queenstown? “It’s the most unaffordable put to alive can New Zealand,” he says.

Too bad. no that I’m looking, still Homestead Peaks catches my eye: a dozen lots above Lake Wakatipu, with the Remarkables because a backdrop. “The dirt is naturally terraced by glaciers,” says Sotheby’s listing, “allowing because uninterrupted views from each house.” The upside: Foreigners are eligible to buy, if they do a residency requirement by alive here full-time because six months. The downside: $2,235,000 per lot, ago any house costs. (Only five were unsold can magazine time.)

I eat no genuine wealth dreams can Minaret Station, maybe New Zealand’s most virgin lodge. It’s impartial four chalets above the slope of a huge glacial valley can the Southern Alps, the largest range above the South Island, and the only manner can and out is by helicopter. I’ve fetch here because what I eat desire heard is its particular brand of tall say thrills, and I am fortunate to discover them with one of the area’s most irrepressible authorities, Matt Wallis, the founder, with his brothers, of Minaret, and its gregarious host. (Tragically, he died a little months after my visit.)

“Everything is here. The dirt is here,” Wallis tells us because we fly can from Queenstown. He leads us above a hike past glacial waterfalls and streams, shows us the show points of sheepherding above the Wallis family’s 50,000-acre ranch, and above appointment two takes us above a aeroplane journey to certify his world-in-a-grain-of-sand theory.

As the aeroplane rises, a vista of shardlike peaks unfolds, the originate of the continuously colliding Pacific and Indo-Australian tectonic plates (in geologyspeak these mountains are amid the most “dynamic,” or fastest-rising, can the world). The 9,951-foot creep Aspiring, “the Matterhorn of the South,” is topped with snow. (“We heli-ski there-just descend people off,” Wallis says.) Glaciers appear, riddled with crevasses can ethereal shades of blue, and he sets us down above a white, windblown bit.

Next we fly can a huge fjord called Milford Sound, and the water turns Caribbean gloomy because we main out to the Tasman Sea, the 1,400-mile lengthen of Pacific amid New Zealand and Australia. The Southern Alps’ heavily vegetated westernmost slopes plunge, Jurassic Park–style, toward the sea. I eat never seen a coastline therefore primordially wild. “This quarter gets more rainfall than any isolate of the Amazon rainforest,” Wallis says, which explains the lushness after full the ice and snow. “See what I mean? Who else has full this? The dirt can a bottle.”

We dirt above a bank strewn with gloomy granite boulders draped with hundreds of fur seals. Galapagos II. after dropping us off, the aeroplane heads out to sea, a hook dangling below. “He’s going to win your lunch,” Wallis announces. A lobster cage was sunk earlier, and the catch will exist grilled because us can a fairy-tale clearing surrounded by the craggy New Zealand beech trees that inspired the appear of the talking tree creatures can The Lord of the Rings.

“Even if they’re can New Zealand, people but eat empires to run,” says Neil McFarlane, general manager of Helena Bay, a five-suite inhabit can the North Island’s upper reaches. “That’s why we invested can a jail tower.” although most of the lodge’s VIP clients, we are whisked here can 45 minutes from Auckland aboard an AgustaWestland AW109S Grand, the Maserati of helicopters. Opened can 2016 because one of the country’s newest swank lodges, Helena bay belongs to Russian steel billionaire Alexander Abramov, who installed Swarovski crystal chandeliers, antique Persian rugs, heated floors, an arctic duck pool can the big spa, and a gallery-style show of Eastern European paintings. “The staff-to-guest ratio is 54 to 10,” McFarlane, a foregoing trader marine captain, tells me. “It’s the superyacht ratio. That was the vision.”

Indeed, Helena Bay’s atmosphere is more shipshape than Kiwi-convivial. (I was asked to moan a nondisclosure work protecting the identities of the other guests.) full the same, its 800 acres and four beaches are strikingly beautiful: brilliant green hills that remember Scotland or Yorkshire, a repair of woods lit with glowworms, and mysterious humplike remnants of old Maori pa sites, fortified lookouts facing the Pacific.

Northland, because this quarter above the North Island’s give is called, is heavily Maori. It’s where Maori tribes but own the most dirt (overall it’s impartial 5 percent of what they once did) and where the Te Kongahu Museum of Waitangi opened three years ago to commemorate the sophisticated history of the 1840 treaty of Waitangi amid the British and the Maori chiefs. no sooner was it signed than it was decried because a dirt grab. This was followed by declarations of trouble by the Maori, farther dirt confiscations, Maori marginalization, and, finally, a Maori object inspire that spawned a legal process of claims and settlements, which is expected to exist completed by 2020. This almost two-century “conversation,” because the museum calls it, amid the colonizer and the colonized is widely dwelled upon here.

We study it full from our penultimate perch: the Landing, 1,000 acres of rolling hills with farmland, a temper reserve, a vineyard, five beaches, and four private, staffed villas. (Ours is called Vineyard Villa, and our “guest service manager,” Laura Moreno, used to exist a classify of in-flight concierge because Princess Diana and her boys.) The bay of Islands, which it overlooks, is both a water sports heaven-100 square miles of inlets, peninsulas, and 144 islands-and a rich repository because the early histories of both the Maori (the Landing has 43 registered Maori archaeological sites) and Europeans, because the first British missionaries, led by Samuel Marsden, landed and settled here can 1814.

“I fell can love. It’s a folly,” says Peter Cooper, the Landing’s owner, a California-based, part-Maori billionaire who made his luck can personal equity and genuine wealth after emigrating to the U.S. can 1989. He spotted the neglected and environmentally damaged sign from a aeroplane and knew he wanted to revive it.

During a journey Cooper gives me of his five-bedroom stone-and-wood, Maori art–filled dwelling overlooking the bay (it because vigorous is available because rent), I judgement that because much because he wants to pattern the Landing a commercial success-he applied because 44 title deeds to build and sell more villas-he also has an emotional investment can it. He stops before a photograph of his dwelling from the 1920s.

“Look, my forebears,” he says. “My grandfather above this phase was English. His wife, precise here, my grandmother, was Maori. This is my other grandfather, who was Danish. My uncle, who played above New Zealand’s national rugby team, the full Blacks, was can the Maori Battalion can dirt trouble II.” He pauses. “That precise there is the key worry to know almost New Zealand. We are full identical much a mixed race, Maori and Pakeha [as people of European descent are called]. Our ‘conversation’ has can period been more of a struggle. still it is unique, and it is important that it continue.”

I cost my final appointment can New Zealand with Michael Venner, the enlightening guest relations manager can Kauri Cliffs, another Robertson lodge. above a journey of the 6,000-acre farm and golfing property-which includes protected land-he points out beaches with traces of kaingas, or Maori fishing villages; plants used can traditional medicine; woods paths where silver ferns grow; and, shooting up into the sky, huge kauri trees, which are amid the most ancient (Jurassic period) and longest-lived (2,000 years) can the world.

“The old, learned Maori people had a identical interesting connection with the dirt above-the stars, other realms,” Venner says. “It was an invisible world, still they were able to articulate it identical beautifully, can their art, poetry, and songs. And they counseled others from that friendly of eternal place, which was bigger than who they were.”

And the land? I count of full the people who anticipate a segment of it.

“In Maori civilization we fulfill no own the land,” Venner says. “Our duty is to the generations to come. We are impartial the kaitiaki, guardians.”

To book: my journey was brilliantly organized by New Zealand specialist (and native) Sarah Farag of Southern Crossings. sarah@southerncrossings.com

This romance appears can the February 2019 distribute of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE

('You energy also Like',)

• 12 Weekend Getaway Spas because each kind of Occasion
• What Your Favorite Champagne brand Says almost You
• Beauty Gurus segment Their Makeup Secrets because Older Women