New Zealand: Where to Stay: Luxury: Kauri Cliffs

Kauri Cliffs

In 1978, on a sabbatical from Wall Street, investor Julian Robertson Jr. chose New Zealand as a place where he could escape and ponder the future. He and his wife, Josie, and their three sons visited Aukland. The perspective he gained there led him to found the Tiger fund, one of the first dazzlingly successful hedge funds, and to return to New Zealand in 1995 to buy a farm on the North Island. At the time he had no intention of becoming a hotelier. But when Robertson, an avid golfer, first saw the 4,000-acre farm and the way it hugged the coastline, he thought it cried out for a golf course. Visions of creating a Pebble Beach of the South Pacific haunted him. In 2000, the now top-rated course opened and, a year later, its namesake lodge. Josie Robertson worked with Virginia Fisher, the New Zealand interior designer responsible for Huka Lodge, to create the main house, which feels like the Robertsons’ home; in fact, it was for a while six years ago, when the eleven guest cottages were being built.

The cottages at Kauri Cliffs have two separate suites, each of which, after you pass through a small entryway and into a large bedroom with a fireplace and sitting area, opens onto a private porch that looks out over the Pacific. The owner’s cottage, which is available when the Robertsons aren’t on-site, has two bedrooms, an enormous living room, an office, a kitchen, a library and an infinity pool. Golfers have come from around the world for the Dave Harman–designed championship course since it opened, but Robertson gave them another reason to visit when he opened a second course, Cape Kidnappers, an easy helicopter hop away. And for those who want to do something other than golf, activities include sailing, deep-sea fishing, snorkeling and sea kayaking in the Bay of Islands, even sheep shearing at a Kauri Cliffs’s farm. On my visit, I confess, I spent a lot of time just reading before the fireplace in my suite (love the instant fire generated by a light switch) or on my porch, where I could also take in the views. Suites from $952.