I’ve been to bush lodges in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi, Uganda, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Ghana, Botswana and Namibia. And that’s just Africa.
I’ve also visited jungle camps in the Amazon, in India’s national parks and Central America’s forests. Tents, chalets, stone and brick structures, straw huts and rondavels, but never a camp quite like Singita Lebombo in the far eastern reaches of Kruger National Park.
Why and how is it different? First, it’s built on a craggy cliff face. Andrew Makin, the designer, wanted guests to be able to enjoy the full advantage of the high position and the sweeping savannah views. He took his idea from nature and observed the way that animals and birds find shelter for themselves. Nests, dens, eyries, lairs – rock faces form no barrier when you need a secure home. But it was Verreaux’s eagle (formerly the black eagle) that provided the ultimate inspiration. Their nests may look somewhat precarious and exposed perched high on rocky ledges but they work. Moreover, they merge perfectly with the landscape.
And so the idea of Lebombo was born. When Lebombo Lodge, Singita Kruger National Park, opened in 2003, architectural eyebrows were raised, old Africa hands muttered about unsuitability, bushwhackers crept gratefully back to their safari tents. Today, eight years on, 15 double cliff-side suites fashioned out of wood, glass and steel seem to hang somewhat perilously on the edge of the crags overlooking vast seemingly endless swathes of the Kruger, but they are as stable and accommodating as the nests of their avian inspirations. Built to “tread lightly” on the environment, no aspect of their construction will remain if the concession is not renewed in a few years’ time.
Today, the rechristened Singita Kruger is world-famous. Only this year, in July, South Africa’s Singita reserves took top honours in this year’s US Travel + Leisure World’s Best Awards 2011 readers’ survey with their Grumeti reserves in Tanzania’s Serengeti ranked No 1, Singita Sabi Sand hot on its heels at No 2, and Singita Kruger National Park No 39, but voted Best Hotel Spa in Africa and the Middle East. Not bad for a new kid on the block.
Today the global environmental message in the tourist industry is low impact, authenticity and integrity, with emphasis placed on giving back to the local community, developing skills and providing jobs. Lindy Rousseau, chief marketing officer for Singita Game Reserves, claims that they “spend more on wildlife projects and community development than anyone else”.
My guide, Collen Sibuyi, started his wildlife career listening to and learning from his father, a self-taught tracker and guide. Collen, too, started his bush career as a tracker, and was so successful at what he did (“I love the bush,” he says simply) that this year he won Best Guide in South Africa at the Indaba Travel Awards. He is now mentoring his own tracker, Solly Ndlovu, who aspires to follow in his skilled footsteps.
I have flown up from Joburg to the Satara airstrip. Then it’s off to the far eastern corner of Kruger, where it borders Mozambique, along the N’wanetsi road, known to regular visitors to Kruger as one of its best predator-viewing roads.
On our first evening drive in the 15 000-hectare private N’wanetsi concession, we stop to admire a pair of giant eagle owls, sexy pink eyelids glowing in the evening light as they softly hoot to one another. A party of New Yorkers sweeps by in another game vehicle. When they hear we are looking at birds, they’re not interested – it’s the Big Five or nothing.
Later that night we find a young female leopard on an impala kill. The next morning the remains of the kill hang high in a tree away from marauding hyenas and lions. We see solitary giant elephant bulls with massive tusks, a herd of sleek buffalo, dazzles of zebras and journeys of giraffe.
One evening we come across a pride of 23 lions that have just wandered in over the Kruger boundary. There are cubs of all shapes and sizes, and only a few lionesses to feed and suckle them. The bush is bare and dry but beautiful in that special way that Kruger always reserves for its many seasons.
Water is scarce and the rivers are drying up. Two rival pods of hippos – up to 30 in each – will soon be fighting over the remaining water sources. They already look grumpy, fed up and are challenging each other with open jaws and mighty roars.
The last night, with my friends Lew Rood and Barry Strick, we drive as high as you can go in the concession and have sundowners on the edge of a cliff. The river wends below us, our backs are to the wire fence that separates South Africa from Mozambique. How fragile and futile are borders, we muse.
The sun sets behind the unique indigenous Lebombo euphorbia. Small bats begin to hunt and in the distance the lions call as hyenas whoop. We breakfast next morning by the Sweni river as hippos squabble and birds sing.
The setting is superb, the lodges remarkable (I spend one night at the smaller Sweni camp, cheek by jowl with the Sweni river), the food of the highest international standard, the service impeccable.
This must be as good as it gets. - Sunday Independent
lKate Turkington was hosted by Singita. www.singita.com