South Africa

South Africa holds more kinds of safari than most countries hold landscapes, and we begin it somewhere many travelers have not yet been: the southern Kalahari, in the Northern Cape. Here red dunes roll into golden grassland beneath the ancient Korannaberg, camelthorn and shepherd’s trees stand alone on the horizon, and after good summer rain the land turns green within days.

In the Kalahari, our stay is Tswalu Kalahari, the largest private game reserve in South Africa: some 1,200 square kilometres shared by no more than sixty guests. Three camps divide them. Motse is where Tswalu began; Tarkuni is an exclusive-use homestead for up to ten; Loapi is six private homes in a secluded valley, each with its own chef. Every booking has its own vehicle, guide and tracker, and the days follow the wildlife rather than a timetable.

The reserve is malaria free, which matters to families with young children, and it is one of the few places in Africa where all of the Elusive Five can be tracked: aardvark, aardwolf, bat-eared fox, brown hyena and Temminck’s pangolin. Desert black rhino, black-maned Kalahari lions, cheetah and African wild dogs share the same ground, and three habituated meerkat colonies welcome early visitors at their burrows.

Further south, in the Great Karoo of the Eastern Cape, Samara Karoo Reserve tells a different story. Since 1997 eleven former farms have been returned to the wild across 67,000 acres of mountain and plain, and cheetah, lion, elephant and black rhino have come back after more than a century away. Three lodges share it with no more than forty guests: Karoo Lodge, a restored farmstead; The Manor, an exclusive use villa; and Plains Camp, four tents for walking. It is malaria free, and among the best places in Africa to track cheetah on foot.

In the north, on the Botswana border, the malaria free Madikwe Game Reserve is about an hour by air from Johannesburg. There, Jaci’s Private Lodge has been family owned since 2000 on the banks of the Marico River: ten safari suites, two private villas and a five bedroom house, with the Big Five, a hide at the water’s edge reached by tunnel, and a real welcome for children.

In KwaZulu-Natal, between Johannesburg and Durban, the malaria free Nambiti Private Game Reserve is the only Big Five reserve in its region. There, Esiweni Luxury Safari Lodge keeps just five suites built into a cliff above the Sundays River, for no more than ten guests. A family-owned Relais & Châteaux lodge with 2 MICHELIN Keys, it is entirely off-grid and solar powered, and pairs game drives and sunrise balloon flights with the French art de vivre.

In Cape Town, Ellerman House looks over the Atlantic from the slopes of Bantry Bay, five minutes on foot from the Clifton beaches. A Cape Edwardian house of 1906, it keeps thirteen rooms and suites and two contemporary villas with their own chefs and infinity pools, almost 1,000 works of South African art, a Wine Gallery of 10,000 South African bottles and one and a half acres of indigenous gardens, with drinks and canapés on the terrace every sunset.

South Africa also makes a natural start or finish for a longer safari. From Johannesburg, the Okavango Delta in Botswana and the dunes of Namibia are a regional flight away, and our Wild Frontiers collection gathers the camps we hold across the continent. Our Journal compares them in safari camps and lodges in East and Southern Africa.