Since leaving Whangarei we have been enjoying a 5-star luxury level of accomodation and cuisine, staying two nights at the Treetops Lodge in Rotorua, and two additional nights at Greenhill The Lodge in Hastings.  Treetops was developed originally as a hunting lodge and is located on 2500 acres of virgin forest stocked with game including deer, wild pig and trout in the lakes and streams. The handsome buildings are constructed from materials harvested on site, from the timber and stone of the architecture to the deer antlers in the chandeliers. Our bedroom wing was really an entire house with kitchen, living room and dining room shared by guests in adjoining bedrooms. However it was a quiet night in Treetops so we pretty much had the estate to ourselves. Every need was catered to – we could help ourselves to house-provided hiking boots and wellies, backpacks and rain slickers (not needed), fly rods and fishing creels, reading glasses (in bowls scattered about the Lodge), even GPS enabled walkie-talkies to carry with us while hiking on the grounds, as cellphone service was non-existent .

There were plenty of activities to avail ourselves of at Treetops – our first evening we shared an elegant 5-course dinner in the dining room with a Dutch couple traveling on a round-the-world vacation while admiring a blazing rainbow that formed just outside the breakfront window. A pretty good thunderstorm provided a downpour and sound effects, but this entire trip (so far, knock on wood), all the rainy weather has occurred at night and the days have been dry and pleasant. This same storm deluged the nearby Lake Taupo area with golfball sized hail, and Auckland recorded some 6500 lightning strikes in a few hours.

As I mentioned, next morning dawned sunny and fair. We took a brief tour of the grounds with one of the chefs, also a Maori who is devoted to developing a garden on the grounds strictly in keeping with traditional Maori agricultural practices handed down over the generations. His garden is fenced with native vines and sharpened sticks to repel the deer and wild boar, rabbits and stoats, and other would-be vegetable predators. Soil drainage is provided by a buried bed of overlapping ferns, and frost protection is also created out of ferns, this time lashed together to form a lid. He taught us how to catch fish using New Zealand flax leaves, and the Maori trick for teaching eels and crayfish to come when called – making it easy to catch them for dinner as desired. We also tasted some of the wild-growing edibles in the bush – vines that store water and have tender edible tips that snap off like an asparagus, a pepper plant with a hot bite to its flavor, and another herb that takes the sting out of the first.

Then Mike and I struck off on our own through the native bush on a hike to Bridal Veil Falls on the property, maybe a three or four mile round-trip excursion. The falls were quite beautiful and I put some extra effort into photographing them. Back to the Lodge for lunch and some down time, then late in the afternoon we went for a two-hour horseback ride with Diddy, the wrangler, a typically crusty outdoorsy type Kiwi, 81 years old, whose son is a successful investment banker in London and married to an international opera star.

Mike and I made a good showing on the horses and were complimented as being the best riders he had guided in several months! The horses were Standardbreds (New Zealand thoroughbreds being too silly for the job, according to Diddy), well trained, nice to ride, definitely knew their job. Diddy’s mount was a five year old and still had some spook – her biggest startle occurring when she flushed up a wild turkey under her feet that flew away gobbling frantically. We also approached several herds of red deer that are maintained on the property and hunted in season. They are impressively large deer with enormous racks of antlers, currently in velvet. Later in the fall it gets quite exciting with the bucks challenging each other, roaring and fighting over the girls, but this time of the year was quiet, with the does hiding out in the underbrush with their fawns (called bambies by Diddy). We ended the ride on the Lodge’s grass lawn where our host greeted us with an offer of a glass of wine as we dismounted while Diddy rode away with our two horses following him loose down the road to the stables.

We showered, enjoyed our second (in two days) elegant 5-course dinner in the dining room – and then crashed into our feather beds with possum fur throws, definitely worn out by the day’s activities.

Next morning I signed up with a local photographer who provides coaching to would-be photographers interested in improving their skills. He is a commercial photographer who shoots landscapes as his hobby, and did an excellent job of finding good vantage points, offering useful tips, and scaling his level of instruction to my level of skill. We met in the living room at 6:30 in the morning and rushed outside as there was a beautiful ground fog just lifting through the valleys and trees as the sun rose. We spent four hours chasing photographs – lots of fun and plenty of exercise for the day. Mike in the meantime enjoyed a leisurely morning checking on his email and reading books – ready to check-out and move on to our next destination.