Treetops Lodge

Treetops sits on 2,500 acres of private native forest outside Rotorua, and the estate's own game and produce turn up on the plate at nearly every meal, an estate to table philosophy that reaches its fullest expression in the Wild Food Cooking Class, where a chef walks guests through preparing venison, wild pork or trout they'll eat that same night. The Maori Food Trail offers a different kind of introduction to the land, tracing traditional harvesting methods with a local guide rather than the geothermal shows more commonly associated with Rotorua. Trout fishing runs along five kilometers of the estate's own spring fed streams, stocked generously enough that first time fly fishers tend to leave with something to show for it, and 4WD safaris push into corners of the property most guests would never find walking. Horseback rides wind through fern lined trails at a slower pace, and the spa folds traditional Maori treatments into massage and body work delivered partly outdoors, under towering rimu and totara trees. For travelers who have already done Rotorua's geothermal parks, Treetops offers a genuinely different kind of wilderness day.