When you're going to a mega-expensive luxury resort, you don't expect the journey there to feature highly. But this one does. It's 6km of highly engineered road weaving away from the Hawke’s Bay coast up through a gully, swapping places with a stony creek bed, building anticipation. Robertson Lodges' The Farm at Cape Kidnappers is, for many of us, something we would normally never experience. If we have the money, we're off overseas.
So, in the time of covid-19, we can think of that winding road as the equivalent of the sea that separates us from our usual holidays.
Up the final steep hill, the main lodge and smaller suites and cottages overlook acres of golf course and on out to sea, well situated for full-frontal sunrises.
We arrive to staff who park our car, take our luggage, press champagne upon us, brew tea, and show us the wine cellar, the swimming pool, and the Picasso and Toss Wollaston landscapes. Our massages will be at 5pm and 6pm. I need to have a little lie-down on the enormous bed, eyes drawn again to the sea horizon, to get over the flurry of arrival.
The Lodge Suite at The Farm, Cape Kidnappers
But I'm too eager to see the property. You never know when the late-winter weather will switch from the glorious sunshine we're lucky to encounter that day.
We order e-bikes, which are held outside by more staff when we step through the huge main doors. We're handed a backpack with water and a GPS tracker so that if we get lost or overcome with the ease of everything, we can call for a pickup. Down the hill we ride, straight to the famed golf course. We stop for a reuben sandwich and a glass of wine on the patio. Staff greet us by name, take our bikes and guide us to our outdoor table.
After an hour, we head further downhill, across 2km of hilly farmland to a private gannet colony. Visitors have always been so respectful that these birds, unfazed by our presence, carry on their raucous and energetic life two metres away from us as we sit atop the famous striped Cape Kidnappers cliffs and watch, enchanted. Surprisingly, two hours pass.
Time for that massage. My wife calls for a pickup while I bike up the hill, and the 4WD picks me up on the way back. The bikes are taken away by someone. It's all so seamless, I don’t notice who did it.
The therapeutic massage is vigorous, in a cathedral-ceilinged spa with an entertaining massage therapist. At dinner that night, after a group cocktail hour, we swap war stories with other diners, competing to see whose massage was the most robust.
Dinner is multi-course and uses local lamb and vegetables grown on site, and I eat far too much. We could have eaten inside by the fire (huge, of course), in the distinctive round snug with its furs and cushions, the library, or the small dining room, but we prefer the view from the front glass wall of the loggia. Now that the sun has set, we can see out across to the lights of Napier. Staff tell us guests can also see the rocket launches from Māhia Peninsula. Rare Kermadec vines climb to huge macrocarpa beams that, because of earthquake regulations, actually encase massive amounts of steel. The floors are slabs of stone from a Nepalese monastery. Every piece of beauty in this lodge is deliberate. The Farm was opened only in 2007, but the buildings are so substantial they feel as though they've been there forever.
We retire to our room early because it's beautiful, too. Someone has been in to tidy and restock. Our deck is perfect for a quiet wine from the fridge or an Egyptian camomile tea and a biscuit from the little pantry. The stars are brighter out here, away from anyone else thanks to that wonderful road. We can hear farm dogs barking – the resort is a working farm of 3000 hectares.
The apartment has a double bath, walk-in shower, his-and-hers bathroom benches, walk-in wardrobe (where our bags have been left) and a giant bedroom with a gas fire, and a TV that swings out from behind a framed picture of sheep.
Sheep may not be unusual for a Kiwi, but I can imagine that the North American guests, who fly into Napier in private jets and are chauffeur-driven to this wonderland, would be delighted with the wide variety of sheep shots around the lodge, and sheep-mustering experiences.
Exploring the land around Cape KidnappersThis year, in place of foreign guests, Cape Kidnappers is welcoming large numbers of Kiwis for the first time, with special pricing to suit our more modest capacity to pay, from seriously, seriously expensive to just expensive – and it’s apparently very popular. The resort has bookings through to November. Kiwis who can't travel overseas are instead leaving their normal home life behind and seeing our country through a different lens. We meet couples on a romantic break, others who might normally be on a cruise, and people who would, if it weren't for covid, spend their holiday on a Rocky Mountaineer luxury train trip in Canada, and the like.
The famous gannets
If I keep coming back to them, it's because the opportunity to sit by yourself next to a colony and watch them steal each other's nesting stones, greet each other, take off, wheel and swoop against the sky, and flop back to earth is rare. They are so close I can photograph them with my old iPhone. This year, unusually, a good number have stayed behind from the annual flight across to Australia.
Breakfast, after a long lie-in, is leisurely back on the loggia, sitting in the sun and taking a long last look across the land and out to sea. Although you can eat as healthily as a bowl of green spinach cream stuff (my wife said it was delicious), the menu also thankfully has excellent real food, like Hawke’s Bay mushrooms on toast.
We whinge to our waitress about having to leave that morning around 10 o’clock. She is the only person we mention this to, and we say it only in passing. But when we go to the front desk to let them know, we are told our car is waiting outside and our luggage is being fetched. It feels a bit like Beauty and the Beast's enchanted castle, where invisible hands meet your every whim – except that at Cape Kidnappers, we can see the smiling staff, who are happy to chat and tell us about their new baby, what it's like to live here, their philosophies about connectedness, and the mechanics of a really good reuben sandwich.
As we drive away back to reality along that excellent road, I prepare myself for having to get my own mountain bike off the back of the SUV, pick up my own towels and get my own car. But it isn't over yet. I'm thirsty. And there, in the cup holder, is a bottle of water left for me by someone thoughtful.
The award-winning golf course at Cape Kidnappers
The Farm at Cape Kidnappers has a special price of $825 + GST per person per night. This Spring Special tariff includes breakfast, lunch, pre-dinner drinks and canapes, guests’ choice of either à la carte dinner or five-course tasting menu, select wine and beverages with lunch and dinner, and complimentary in-suite, non-alcoholic minibar. Each guest can decide between a relaxing 50-minute spa massage in the lodge’s world-class spa facilities or a day of unlimited green fees (per person for each night stayed) on the award-winning Cape Kidnappers golf course.
robertsonlodges.com/the-lodges/cape-kidnappers
