Travellin' On

Tucked away in the bush-clad hills a stone's skip from Takou Bay are several luxury chalets built Tahitian style. They were built by a French couple and if one word can describe them both - and their daughter Tea (pron: tay-ah and means light) - it could only be intrepid.

Carole Giron and Frank Rasclas lived on a tiny atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago in Tahiti. When they arrived there was no electricity and initially they lived in a tent until they finished building a lodge to house themselves and paying guests. Everything had to be brought in from the main island and in the end they only left the atoll because Tea needed more socialisation than the isolated existence could offer.

They arrived in Kerikeri to build a similar Tahitian-style lodge so French Polynesians could come to New Zealand for holidays nd feel at home even if, as it turned out, their first guests were a newly-married Kiwi couple. It took over a year to clear the land and once again there was no electricity which had o be connected from the road in an expensive exercise.

"Frank cut 250 pines, cleared the gorse and then we started building," says Carole. "In Tahiti construction is easy but in New Zealand we had to have a qualified builder who did the roof, the walls and the windows and the rest we did ourselves."

They opened Cocozen in 2008. There's a main lodge, three chalets, a sport room, a yoga room, a pool and a Jacuzzi all nestled in quiet surroundings offering the impression of isolation and yet only 30 minutes from town. Business has been good even if the recession has made life a little tough but as they discovered, life can be made even more rugged by Immigration officials.

"We didn't have our residency so it meant we would have to leave the country.

"I told them the previous builder left with our money so it took us a while to fill that gap. We had to do the medical again and I said I will not do it for my daughter because between the ages of one and seven the chest doesn't change on a little girl. I was so upset we had to do it all again."

With just ten days to go before being kicked out of the country, their residency came through but given they were running a business on the appropriate visa, it was knife-edge stuff.

In addition to guests from French Polynesia, Cocozen is now hosting more Kiwis who experience the natural products cooked French style or the home-grown honey and fresh bee pollen sprinkled on home-made muesli. Not so long ago Carole invited the neighbours to dinner and 16 arrived. Some had never met before but they swapped business cards over what she termed 'foie gras and all French stuff'.

If that's not like being in another world, what is?