In the News
A fab bush break
May 20 2011 at 08:21am
By Adrian Rorvik
Springbok Lodge nestles in the heart of Nambiti Private Game Reserve
Springbok Lodge nestles in the heart of Nambiti Private Game Reserve and epitomises the perfect safari getaway. The 8 000ha private reserve near Ladysmith and Newcastle is also home to the Big 5 as well as cheetah, hippo and over 30 species of game which roam freely through the grasslands and thornveld.
The Sundays River creates a unique sanctuary attracting several rare bird species and an enviable array of raptors and vultures.
This pristine wilderness allows you to truly relax and celebrate nature, her beauty and the small, thrilling moments. Drifting off to sleep under star-studded skies, waking to the calls of the wild and drinking in picture perfect moments under the glorious African sky make for a truly “Out of Africa” experience.
The accommodation at Springbok Lodge is superb – 15 elevated, luxurious, safari-style air-conditioned and en suite tents with an outdoor shower. The cuisine and friendly service are of equally high standards.
Heading off on an open game-viewing vehicle is extraordinarily rewarding. A personal guide ensures you get the most out of the experience and enjoy the abundance of wildlife and unspoilt African vistas. Stopping to stretch your legs offers plenty of opportunities to take it all in – the sounds and silences of the bush, the majestic sunrises or sunsets while sipping an Amarula coffee or sundowner, humbled by such surroundings.
Guided or self-drive day trips to the nearby battlefields can also be arranged, or you can try your hand at bass fishing (catch and release) in the reserve’s dams.
Golfing enthusiasts can also enjoy a round at the nearby golf clubs.
Dining around a crackling fire in the boma on fine summer and balmy winter nights are further highlights, as are Springbok Lodge’s bush breakfasts.
Springbok Lodge is perfect for safari-style dream weddings and there aren’t too many places where you can conference with the Big 5 on your doorstep. Day visitors are also welcome, the lodge is easily accessible from the N3.
Bush tales make lodge stay memorable
May 19 2011 at 11:03am
By Helen Grange
Lukimbi Safari Lodge is luxurious, but also accommodates children wel
A leopard named Makubela used to lounge around the swimming pool at Idube Lodge, but was killed last year by another leopard staking his claim on the territory just beyond the lodge perimeter. Makubela came home to die, of a punctured lung, and he’s been so missed by the owners and staff that the new luxury suites have been named after the handsome, near-tame big cat.
It’s stories like these – unmentioned in the marketing spiel – that create a sense and memory of a place, and they come as part of the deal at private lodges such as Idube, established 25 years ago in the Sabi Sand game reserve on the south-west border of the Kruger National Park. Like the tale of the mystery elephant who eluded staff for ages as they tried to figure out how one of the plunge pools was drained every morning.
Two weeks after I visited Idube, I received an e-mail from a friendly Swiss couple I met there, and I could feel their hankering – not for the expansive bed or tasty meals, but for the orange-pink sunsets, and the stories of the bush and its denizens, told with love by its keepers.
Local bush nuts among us also can’t get enough of these stories, though I have to admit the luxury lodge screens out the blackjacks, biting insects and dangers so effectively it’s well near being an IMAX movie experience.
Owner-built and managed, the four-star Idube is the ideal size to nurture intimacy and anecdotal journeying. It has 10 recently refurbished chalets that are comfortable and well-equipped, with indoor and outdoor showers and a private viewing deck. They are spread out on lawn and under shady trees where nyala and warthog families take refuge. The main lodge’s open lounge overlooks a riverbed and Shadulu Dam, a magnet for elephants, and there’s a pool as well as an underground hide.
As with most lodges in this class, sticking to the morning and afternoon game drives timetable is sort of an unspoken rule. At Idube, should you skip the afternoon drive and opt to read in your chalet until after sunset, you have to wait for a guide to cross the lawn to fetch you for dinner, lest you get pounced on en route. As there is no room phone, only an emergency siren, there’s nothing for it but to wait for the torchlight.
Idube is a safari lodge in the Sabi Sand Game Reserve.
Unspoken rules apply to bedtime too. Though you can hold up the bar until after 10pm, you’ll be the only guest doing it. But I’m with the Germans on this one: pre-dawn rambles and sedate, contemplative evenings are what make the bushveld getaway so soulful and restorative.
In any case, dinner in Idube’s lantern-lit boma is sufficient bonding with the small handful of other guests. Game meats are often featured on the menu, and there’s a well-stocked wine cellar.
Idube’s sister lodge is Lukimbi, a two-and-a-half hour drive that takes you into the Kruger Park through the Malelane gate. This is a bigger lodge that meanders along the banks of the Lwakahle river, with a vast veranda that offers a generous vista of the bush and a watering hole.
Meals are a step up to haute cuisine, favouring platters of fruit, veggies, olives, hummus and pita, carpaccio and cheeses at lunchtime, to please the increasingly health-conscious European and American palates. Not for the boerewors and beer types!
What caught my eye at Lukimbi was the decor and art, an eclectic, colourful mix of southern African and East African-style furnishings, wall hangings and objets d’art, infusing an elegant ambience that establishments overly enamoured with local craft don’t achieve. The swimming pool, which blends seamlessly into the bush and bar area, is another work of art.
Lukimbi has 16 suites, much more lavish and spacious than those at Idube, with private viewing decks. The cherry in them is a handcrafted marble bath with three-way windows looking out over the bush. Two ultra-luxurious suites have their own plunge pool, dining area and additional bathroom. The suites are connected to the main lodge by wooden walkways and covered decks.
Past guests have praised the superb Big Five and smaller game viewing.
Not least because of its size, this lodge is child-friendly, and has a kid’s safari programme with activities such as clay modelling, touch and feel walks, art classes, mask making, supervised swimming and bush alphabet. There’s also a babysitting service available, with beds and cots available on request, and high chairs in the form of quirky wood-carved animals for toddlers to dine at.
There’s a small gym near the pool, you can get a “Bush Buff massage”, and for workaholics and bookworms, there’s a lovely library with a desktop.
For wine lovers, Lukimbi has a great cellar (while I was there a visiting government minister ordered the last two of the most expensive bottles of Kanonkop for R1 405 each for his dinner entourage), and here your ranger doubles as barman who happens to know screeds about wine too. Be warned, though, drinks are extra, including those on the game drives, and you’ll be surprised at how much they add to the final bill at R35 a gin and tonic.
The Swiss couple, who happened to be on the same trail and joined me within a day at Lukimbi, were enthralled by Lukimbi – “it was the highlight of our trip”, they wrote in the e-mail – and couldn’t get enough sightings of the “rheeno”. What charmed me was the huge boma, a circle of man-made giant ant mounds and coves, on a floor bed of river sand, which takes on dreamlike proportions in the candlelight.
Bounded by three major river systems, the area surrounding Lukimbi offers a diverse array of habitats: vast grasslands dominate the northern portion, and the southern and central areas are heavily wooded and interspersed with lush riverine thickets. It’s the ideal habitat for large herds of zebra, wildebeest and other plains animals, while the white rhino can enjoy the pans and wallows and the shyer black rhino can hide in the wooded areas. Elephants are plentiful and the river directly in front of the lodge is a favourite bathing spot. The usually elusive leopard seems easier to find here too, and birders have more than 420 identified species to look for.
l Idube: R3 000 a person sharing (until September). Special for May: R1 980 a person a night sharing. Call 011 431 1120 or visit www.idube.com
Struck by travel’s golden arrow
May 20 2011 at 11:16am
By Myrtle Ryan
‘Okay to trade blows over Indaba’
“In the late afternoon we take a drive, then stop to listen to the sunset. In the early morning we walk with the Bushmen, who read for us the previous night’s newspaper.”
This delightful description, which comes from !Xaus Lodge in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, tells how guests do not just watch the sun sink below the horizon, but also listen for the change in noises in the bush as everything settles down for the night.
It also describes how the Khoisan interpret animal activities of the night before. While we city folk turn to the newspapers, they draw on their ancient skills.
Tales told by a representative of Boundless Southern Africa of walking for 18km in the Richterveld Transfrontier Park, as stars spangled the night sky, were equally evocative.
While the proverbial apple may keep the doctor away, for me travel is an unrivalled medicine. So while I did not exactly leap out of my sick bed after a bout of illness, it was with hopeful spirits that I headed for the famous Indaba travel fair in Durban last weekend.
Within minutes of arriving, the sparkle was back in my eyes, the spring was back in my step and eager anticipation replaced lethargy. Just the thought of travel was enough to work this minor miracle.
While delectable destinations beckoned on every stand, amazing photographs lured, and high-end lodges tantalised, I have singled out some of the more unusual travel offerings.
While it is mostly international visitors that buy into the concept of volunteer tourism, Voluntours would love to see more South Africans participate in this kind of tourism.
Imagine fetching building material for a project in a donkey cart; perhaps expressing your artistic skills by painting the wall of an Ndebele house with the geometric patterns for which they are famous; rescuing and medically assisting an injured leopard; performing an autopsy on a snake; helping a community set up business systems; teaching kids basic computer skills.
The options are unlimited, and while you are gaining insight into other cultures, you can have the satisfaction of doing something worthwhile.
At Inverdoorn Game Reserve & Safari Lodge in the Karoo, overnight guests can watch cheetah racing across the veld. The 10 000ha reserve is involved in the Western Cape Cheetah Conservation project, as well as acting as a genetic reservoir for endangered species. The daily run by the cheetah is to ensure they get the exercise so crucial to their wellbeing.
While there are many lodges at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, Taita Falcon Lodge claims to be the only one downstream from the falls. Sitting on the viewing deck, visitors not only have a bird’s eye view of the gorge far below, but often find themselves on a level with the many raptors soaring the thermals.
A representative told how a peregrine falcon had taken a smaller bird right under the noses of guests on the deck. They say they have an arrangement whereby helicopters circling the falls avoid the Taita area, hence the preponderance of birds of prey.
Again it might appeal more to foreigners, but Lebo’s Soweto Backpackers offers not only accommodation, but an opportunity to gain insight into Soweto on a bicycle or tuk-tuk tour.
Interestingly, Durban’s Victoria Market was also exhibiting in style. Their representative said they had decided to go sleek, modern and contemporary, while not losing sight of the market’s 100 years of heritage and rich culture.
If a hike along the Wild Coast grabs you, the Wild Coast Meander (from Kob Inn to Morgan Bay), apparently the first slack-packing trail in the country, is still going strong. Then there’s the Wild Coast Amble from Morgan Bay to Glengariff just outside East London.
If you want to walk, but not venture too far, guests based at Mbotyi River Lodge can do the Pondo Walk, which goes out from the lodge either north or south along the coast, or into the interior, on short outings.
Maybe you might like a walk on the wild side with meerkats. A guide takes visitors on an early sunrise tour in the De Zeekoe Reserve, near Oudtshoorn, to get acquainted with these inquisitive little creatures.
A stargazing safari in the Kalahari sounded appealing; then there’s the world’s largest bird cage, with some 3 500 birds flitting about at Birds of Eden in Plettenberg Bay. The cage currently weighs 88 tons, but when new stainless steel mesh is fitted, it will shed 80 tons in weight but gain capacity.
Of course, it is those distant destinations that really give me the travel bug. The stunning beaches of Rodrigues Island in the Indian Ocean; the deserted beaches and soaring jungle-clad peaks of Sao Tome and Principe, off the west coast of Africa; Mozambique’s azure sea and snowy beaches; the Botswana Odyssey; the mystique of Namibia’s deserts; and a boat ride along the Nile River to the base of the magnificent Murchison Falls in Uganda, were all carrots to this willing traveller.
An interesting and tasty snack was the Venda vegetable biltong, made from dried pumpkin flowers, but I refused a dried mopane worm and some insect that looked suspiciously like a cockroach, despite being assured it was a delicacy.
The only downside to the day was that I lay in bed that night planning travel itineraries so fervently that sleep eluded me.
