View with a room, where are we?
Little River PurePod, New Zealand.
Why we love it?
Is it a room? Hard to say. But it most certainly has a view, and in every direction – up, out and down. Views are the point of this futuristic, freestanding glass box in a wraparound of sky and native New Zealand bush. Nothing inside spoils the panorama, not carpet, curtains or ceiling. Even the bedhead is glass. At night the Milky Way is a silvery arc above your head, by day the Pacific a distant shimmer of blue. Hills and valleys ripple away right and left. Flowers bloom beneath the transparent floor. This isn’t a hotel, or even close, though it’s luxurious and well-equipped. It’s just you: the great outdoors and your self-contained retreat from the world, where solar power makes everything work, worms take care of the waste and filtered rainwater is piped from the shearing shed of a nearby farm. Otherwise there’s no one for miles. No one waiting on arrival, no staff and no service, or none that you need meet or see. You make your own tea or coffee, take supper from the tiffin in the fridge, serve yourself homemade granola in the morning. There’s no Wi-Fi, no TV, no phone signal – but pity the sould in this Eden who craved the outside world. Should you need it, help is a sun-powered satellite-phone call away. What do you do here? You decompress. You slow down. Look at the night sky (star chart provided). Watch the hovering hawks (binoculars, also provided). Listen to the surround sound of birdsong and breeze. Perhaps only a tented safari puts you as close to nature, with the difference that in the New Zealand bush there are fewer things that will chase, kill, bother or poison you. Just ferns under your feet and stars over your head.
Tim Jepson, Conde Nast Traveller
25/7/2015
