Arrive.
All you need to know about Arete.
Travel Tips, Getting Here & Transfers
The meeting Point | Makahika OPC, Maingate Entrance. We gather here, and then you will be escorted through the locked forestry gates to the rear of our property.
Arete Retreat is located at 865 Gladstone Road, (approx. 20 minutes East) of Levin in the Manawatu-Wanganui Region of the lower North Island of New Zealand. Arete is tucked onto the back of our main property, nestled into the foothills of the Tararua Forest Park, and is part of the wider Makahika Outdoor Pursuits Centre property.
If you’re driving from Wellington, Arete is about 1 hour 15 minutes by car. If you’re driving from Palmerston North, it’s just under 1-hour away.
The nearest main airports are Wellington or Palmerston North, but if you’re flying from Auckland, you could also fly into Kāpiti airport in Paraparaumu via Air Chathams.
We can accommodate helicopter landings with prior arrangement.
We are able to uplift your group from the airport to meet your flight timings. It is also suggested that if your team is located in Wellington City, or Palmerston North City, you arrange to travel as a ‘group’, travelling to and from your location to Arete. It reduces the carbon footprint, while also ensuring the team arrive ‘together’ and leave ‘together’, embedding your retreat experience.
Our roads are rural and fairly isolated with limited cell range in transit; to decrease your stress and increase your safety, please ensure your team know where to meet us (at the Makahika OPC Maingate), and/or let us arrange to pick you up. It will be our pleasure.
Dining at Arete
Divine, organic, free-range, locally sourced product, is prepared and served from the extraordinary ‘little’ whare kai. Sally’s passion is food. Thus, if Sally is not gallivanting around the world on a speaking tour, she will happily spend her evenings providing a fun and engaging dining experience. Supported by her catering team, there are no dietary needs that cannot be accommodated. Your needs will be explored, menus discussed, and wine lists made, as part of the discovery process for your Retreat.
What to Expect Once You’re Here
Our point of difference is that Arete Retreat is truly off grid. Our own power, water and eco-composting systems. We do, however, have cell phone coverage.
The Retreat is proudly carbon neutral. We use the sun and our solar systems to cool your beer and wine, light your evenings and spark your infinity gas showers.
Beautiful, simple and elegant, our accommodation whare don’t have power points; you can’t use a hairdryer, charge your phones, or plug in your computers. But you do have beautiful linen, gorgeous bedding, fabulous dressing gowns, and luxurious towels.
The facilitation wharenui has power for computers, pro-lights etc, however, our preferred facilitation tools are flip charts, pens, string and pegs. The neuroscience is simple: there is amazing relief for our brains to be off blue-light and decrease our dopamine addiction and goal interference.
Bringing warm clothes, comfortable footwear, and a good rain jacket, will ensure you are able to relax for this extraordinary rain forest experience. We have umbrellas for keeping dry while navigating between the accommodation whare and the main social and dining spaces. At summer, the pathways are lit, as if you are enveloped within a tropical paradise, with sandalwood flares, and solar lighting. Truly magical.
We look forward to welcoming you to our little slice of paradise.
the nights are cool
your rooms are heated by ethanol and/or diesel heaters; however, we strive to keep the rooms no warmer than 16 degrees C. Why? The science is clear, 16-18 c is the ideal temperature for your body to enter glymphatic (deep cleansing) sleep. So, if you like to be really warm at night, let us know and we’ll make sure you have an extra duvet!
bring a torch. We provide little lamps, torches etc., but often people leave those all around the retreat, so always useful to have a backup.
bring your imagination and curiosity with you. You’ll see, hear, and feel things that may not normally be on your radar. We are working very hard to provide you with an experience that will change your life.