Cloud 12 Boutique Luxury Lodges NZ Style – Activity focused Properties

The Martinborough Hotel – luxury boutique accommodation

I need escape, retreat and some real just-for-me time and a friend had mentioned Cloud 12’s boutique luxury lodges NZ collection. Typically you could plonk me down just about anywhere in New Zealand and I would find my happy face but this time I want something a little more specific. The year has been challenging, my brain is a little fried from working my socks off and life has thrown a few curve balls at me – it is going to take something extra special this time to recharge my batteries. So I’m on a mission……a search for the perfect place. I have made a wish-list which even to my eyes looks a little outlandish, a little too greedy……….

1. I want heart-achingly beautiful views to wake up to each day and perhaps gaze at for hours on end from a private deck outside my super-comfortable holiday apartment as I do absolutely nothing.
2. I want a water’s edge hideaway where I can retreat and unwind.
3. I want to have a day with a dolphin in it – maybe several dolphins.
4. I want a massage or two to soothe away my troubles and cares and make me forget the world for a while.
5. I want to take myself off and not see another soul – perhaps with the only sounds that of the water as it drips off the paddle of my kayak as I drift past yet another impossibly beautiful bay.
6. I want a to feast on seafood in an elegant restaurant – which has to be right on my doorstep – at a table where I can watch the sun go down as I sip my glass of crisp white wine.
7. I want some-one to pack me a picnic before I head off for a swim in calm, sheltered waters in shades of turquoise and emerald which soothe me to my very soul or find a tucked away corner to read my book.

As I dream my perfect wish-list I am starting to think it unlikely that anywhere on the planet would manage to tick all these boxes. Besides, my mother was always telling me that ‘want, want, want doesn’t get’.

But maybe, just maybe, my mum might have been making that up all these years. Either that or it would appear I have a fairy-godmother lurking in the side-lines because I have just discovered a company called Cloud 12 who offer a range of luxury and boutique lodges which could quickly see me over-using the words lovely and luxury when trying to describe them.

Raetihi lodge – Marlborough Sounds

I am a little spoiled for choice but Raetihi Lodge in the Marlborough Sounds may actually be a perfect match for my wish-list. Situated right at the water’s edge and surrounded by private gardens and hillside (that little bundle ticks off wish 2 quite nicely), there is an on-site restaurant which looks directly onto the magical Sounds (check! – wish list number 6). I can choose from sea-view, garden or hill-view rooms (think I’ll go with the sea-view option which ticks off every element of ‘wish 1′ on my list).

Kayaks and fishing rods are free for guests and there are on-site massage and spa facilities – more checks on the dream list. What about the dolphins?’ Well, Cloud 12 doesn’t just dish up accommodations in the opulent hideaway and tranquil retreat categories but also offer a range of activities to be laid at their guests’ feet too; one of which just happens to be wildlife watching boat cruises. Check, check and again check.

Since discovering Cloud 12 I have got quite into making new wish lists. My latest examples include a setting in a private forest with river views from my private balcony. I can have that at Solitaire Lodge on the picturesque Lake Tarawera, Rotorua. For a wine and food experience I am tempted by the impressive Martinborough Hotel which is just an hour a way by car from Wellington. Or maybe next year I’ll go shark cage diving before returning to my sea-front holiday escape in the elegant Hotel Chathams in the Chatham Islands. Or perhaps I will just return to the extra-special Raetihi Lodge for my dose of curve-ball-world antidote – I’ve earned it.

Hotel Chathams on Chatham Islands – the perfect ‘getaway’