Angus Begg
TRAVEL
Simultaneously smiling and serious, the blond forty-something wildlife exec called me over to his stall. It was the Indaba 2000 in Durban, the Southern African tourism industry’s annual showcase to the world. “You’ve got to see this,” he said, with a fair deal of enthusiasm.
I already had, or so I thought at the time, and I told him so.
His name is Patrick Shorten, the managing director of Mpumalanga’s Sabi Sabi private game reserve, which since its inception more than 20 years ago has become synonymous with the South African luxury wildlife experience. He wanted me to see the changes at his establishment after I’d told him I’d never rated it as much more luxurious than an upgraded version of the Kruger National Park’s main rest camp, Skukuza – with aircon.
Shorten showed me an audio-visual screening of the plans for Sabi Sabi’s new camp under construction, Earth Lodge. A subterranean affair, it promises to reinvent, indeed revolutionise, the already thriving game lodge industry in South Africa. At R5 000 a night it also promises to blow a hole in your pocket.
Of course, the primary target is the overseas tourist, says Shorten, describing the average Sabi Sabi guest as “usually a first-time visitor to South Africa”, and quite often even the continent itself. And the cost, he says, of pampering this visitor with food and attention and virtually promising the Big Five on a plate is not cheap.
I joined American visitors Jerry and Bethany Riskin on a game drive one mild winter morning. It was their first time in Africa. Their sheer joy and amazement at seeing an impala for the first time, the warm glow of the rising sun dappling its coat in an assortment of russet and brown, was a reminder of the majesty on offer in the African bush. “We had to keep pinching one another,” gushed Bethany, “to make sure that we weren’t dreaming.”
But simply being in the bush enjoying nature’s miracles wasn’t enough for the 22- year-old ranger at the wheel of the open game-drive vehicle, and after an hour had gone without a sniff of a lion, leopard or cheetah, we headed off to the far end of the reserve, the two- way radio burbling on constantly about what so-and-so had seen and where.
Anxiety is the last emotion you should feel in the bush and it really wasn’t the enthusiastic lad’s fault. As one of the senior rangers readily admitted, there is a pressure on the rangers, especially the younger, inexperienced ones, to deliver at least one of big paw, big ears or big horn before breakfast. For all the ranger knows it could be the fault of the marketing woman in Vancouver who guaranteed the client a sighting of a lion clutching on to the rear end of a rhino that was chasing an elephant through a grove of acacia knobthorn.
But it’s not all as I describe. That’s how it quite easily can be, which goes for most of the other lodges in the area, too.
The afternoon after the rally session, with a gin and tonic on the deck of Sabi Sabi’s turn-of-the-century period piece, Selati Lodge, I breathed in the stillness of the bush and relaxed in the company of foraging baboons, bushbuck and duiker down below. Pretty much the way it was meant to be.
Far from a true wilderness like Zambia’s Luangwa Valley, the Sabi Sabi private game reserve and the entire Sabi Sand reserve around it is nevertheless what South Africa excels at: a managed, commercially run operation with a good chance of the Big Five and a fence somewhere down the line. Luxury plus aircon. Great for the first-timer. If you want it, and can afford it, why not?
For more information, contact Sabi Sabi: Tel: (011) 483 3939; or visit their website at www.sabisabi.com