What it’s like at Lakestone Lodge in Twizel, New Zealand

Lakestone Lodge, a luxury location that takes just twelve-guests, overlooks Lake Pūkaki near Twizel.

A luxury alpine lodge that hosts only 12 guests at a time is so popular Oprah Winfrey couldn’t score a room. Eva de Jong reveals what it’s like as a guest.

It may not look like much, but a tiny lodge perched on top of a hill, overlooking Lake Pūkaki near Twizel, is the location Oprah picked for a trip to New Zealand.

Sadly, for dedicated Lakestone Lodge owners Mike and Anna Bacchus, their six rooms were fully booked when Oprah’s team called. However, they managed to organise for her to stay at a neighbour’s property and got to meet the star.

Anna and Mike Bacchus, who are keen cyclists, took 15 months to build their dream lodge near Twizel.

The cycling-mad Kiwi couple say building a luxury lodge into a successful business has involved a lot of grit and luck.

Lakestone Lodge sits alone above the water, blending into the dry grass of the surrounding hills, and its isolation is likely appealing for high-flying guests seeking fresh mountain air, silence and privacy.

There’s also a helipad on site to allow guests to be deposited in the harsh landscape.

In winter, temperatures at the lodge can plummet to as low as -20C.

Inside the lodge, the general decor has been stripped back to allow the enchanting view of the mountains to take centre stage. The interior feels more like a cosy ski lodge than the cold grandeur of a posh hotel.

Mike says they were extremely lucky to secure one of the few sites dotted around the lake, with the rest of the winding road surrounding Lake Pūkaki largely uninhabited.

The pair are passionate cyclists and in 2012, when biking the Alps to Ocean Cycle Trail, they conjured up the crazy idea of building a piece of destination accommodation close to the trail’s start.

The lodge is 65km from the beginning of the trail at Aoraki Mt Cook and rests in New Zealand’s most extreme alpine environment.

An exquisite breakfast at the lodge.

The night I stay there despite the frigid winds blowing outside, the whole corridor and rooms are toasty warm.

The head chef, who’s worked on-site for more than nine years, cooks a beautiful three-course meal of fresh salmon, a cut of juicy roast lamb and sweet lemon tart. Each plate has a unique combination of flavours, such as crumbly meringue with raw salmon – strange but delightful!

In the summer months, the lodge is a popular destination for visitors from New Zealand, America and Europe. Unsurprisingly, it’s also attracted some big stars, such as Irish singer Dermott Kennedy. However, Anna and Mike keep things discreet, never sharing names unless visitors share their stay on social media.

Building an alpine retreat in -20 temps

Unsurprisingly, the process of building a luxury lodge in alpine conditions isn’t easy.

Over the 15 months of construction, temperatures fell -20C during winter, causing the anti-freeze in the underfloor heating pipes to burst the concrete slab. Even the diesel in a builder’s truck on-site turned to wax in the freezing cold.

“I didn’t know New Zealand got that cold; I had no idea!” Mike says.

Guests can admire the view and at night, the stars from the hot tub.

During the summer, the lodge experiences some of the hottest temperatures in the country, with low rainfall and extreme winds reaching up to 200km/h.

These winds are known to roll vehicles and tourists’ large campervans, meaning the trampoline on the lodge’s site had to be fixed to the ground with eight concrete anchors.

A few days before Christmas in 2015, Mike started a grass fire that got out of control and burned through multiple acres of land, requiring firefighters and helicopters with monsoon buckets to put it out.

To add to their woes, despite the lodge being situated right next to one of New Zealand’s biggest hydro lakes, it had to be completely off-grid, as it would’ve cost $1.4 million to install a power cable to connect the lodge.

Instead, Mike applied his DIY mentality to power the whole lodge through a combination of solar panels, a backup battery system, an electric vehicle and a backup diesel generator if all else fails.

“The lodge has always been off-grid since day one,” he says.

The stars above the lodge offer a dazzling sight at nightfall.

The lodge also sits beneath the Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve, and guests can be set up with recliner chairs in the tussock, a sheepskin rug and mulled wine for a stargazing tour, or they might prefer to watch from the hot tub.

“It’s one of the best places in the world to see the stars,” Anna says.

The head chef at Lakestone Lodge has worked there for nine years and serves a three course meal to guests.

Since opening 10 years ago, Anna says the lodge has been going “unbelievably well”, but despite its success, the couple are in no rush to expand the size.

“We don’t want more rooms,” Mike says.

“In a site like this, we could have a Hermitage and 100 rooms but then we’d have 100 staff, and we wouldn’t be talking to any of the guests because we’d be dealing with staff dramas.

“A little bit selfishly, we wanted to live here and have the best life with our kids.”

I understand what they mean. At its current size, in the evenings, the lodge falls into a hushed quiet. Outside the glass doors of my room a storm is brewing and dark clouds loom above the snow-capped peaks.

Yet, in this tiny dwelling built to withstand the elements, there’s a sense of peace.

Checklist

Twizel, New Zealand

GETTING THERE

Fly from Auckland to Queenstown with Air New Zealand. Twizel is then about a two-and-a-half-hour drive.

DETAILS

Further information about travelling in the Mackenzie Region can be found on mackenzienz.com.

New Zealand Herald visited Lakestone Lodge courtesy of Mackenzie Region NZ.