‘And, 120km away, they’re sitting in gridlock traffic,” Mike Rowley, the marketing and development manager of the Legacy group, chuckles as he turns back to look out through the open sides of the game-drive vehicle.
We look too. The late afternoon sun is soft on the landscape, brown grassland and gently rolling hills in the giant volcanic crater that forms the Pilanesberg National Park.
On this half-hour game drive, we’ve seen elephant, zebra, rhino, impala, wildebeest, lion (crossing the road, presumably to get to the other side), giraffe, crocodile, hippo, terrapins and a host of birdlife.
On our way back to the lodge that night, the sharp, sweet, cool smell of the African bushveld in the air, we will see jackal, a group of three rhino right next to the road, and a civet, an animal our game ranger tells us he’s never seen in his five years working in the Pilanesberg — he didn’t even know the park had any civet. We were very lucky.
The Legacy Hotels and Resorts group has three lodges in the Pilanesberg: Bakubung, Kwa Maritane and Tshukudu.
Bakubung, which means “people of the hippo”, is just inside the Pilanesberg National Park’s Bakubung gate, to the west of Sun City. The four-star lodge is elegantly rustic: facebrick buildings with thatched roofs house comfortably carpeted hotel rooms. The bar and lounge area are made especially pleasant in winter by two log fires. To describe them as “roaring” is no doubt a cliché, but see what adjective you come up with when you finally get inside after an evening game drive, nose and toes and fingers freezing. Add a cup of (steaming) hot chocolate and your evening is complete.
Bakubung serves a buffet lunch and dinner (try the tomato soup starter). The perimeter fence is only a few hundred metres from the lodge: it’s quite normal to eat your lunch while watching a family of warthog root for theirs. The nearby waterhole, though it no longer houses the hippo for which the lodge was named, attracts wildebeest and waterbuck, among other animals; even occasionally an elephant or two.
Like the larger Kwa Maritane, Bakubung is linked with timeshare operator RCI and has 64 self-catering units available. There are 54 timeshare units at Kwa Maritane.
Almost as old as the national park itself, Kwa Maritane is described by general manager Dave Johnson as “the grand old lady of the Pilanesberg”. It’s not nearly as rustic-looking as Bakubung; the feeling here is of nature kept at bay. White walls under thatched roofs shine in the sun as water from a small fountain falls into the crystal swimming pool. We admire the green grass around the pool and Johnson admits that they spruced the place up, including planting a new lawn, for the Fifa World Cup. The lodge hosted four Fifa World Cup teams, New Zealand, Japan, Mexico and Denmark, for a night each during the tournament.
In late 2008 the lodge suffered a devastating fire, the result of a suspected electrical fault in the kitchen roof, and the entire facility had to be closed for two months. Today, though, the sole evidence of the fire is scorch marks on the palm trees around the pool.
The restaurant, which was destroyed in the blaze, is now even better than before, with ostrich-egg chandeliers (“surprisingly durable”, says Johnson), an extended deck overlooking a small waterhole and a cocktail bar. One of the best features of Kwa Maritane is its game-viewing hide. It’s accessed from a 180m-long tunnel that runs from just outside the restaurant to within a few metres of the waterhole. A camera on a pole records the activity at the waterhole 24 hours a day and can be watched on the lodge’s TV channel, so that people can see what’s happening at the waterhole before dashing off to see the animals in the flesh, as it were.
But the jewel of Legacy’s Pilanesberg lodges is Tshukudu. It consists of six separate luxury rooms built on a hill in the heart of the game reserve. There are 132 steps to climb to get to the main lodge at the top of the hill, but the view is worth it. The lounge and dining room, in fact the entire lodge, look like something out of a luxury lifestyle magazine: the Africanness of the setting, the thatched lapa-style roof and the muted colours contrast with the luxury of the over-the-top crystal chandeliers, the five-star meals and the supreme elegance of it all.
It is difficult to imagine a more ideal honeymoon spot. There are no TVs or radios, there’s no internet and the cellphone signal is sporadic. The rooms are small but comfortable and guests are free to decide whether they want to eat in the communal area or have their meals brought to them. There’s a view everywhere you look; even the baths were built with the view in mind. Oh, and no children under 12 are allowed. Guests book in at Bakubung and are brought in by game vehicle. No cars either. Romantic getaway, anyone?
Tshukudu also has a splash pool at the top of the hill, which must be heaven in summer, and a comfortable braai area. Although it is fairly pricey, guests who book a week’s timeshare at Bakubung or Kwa Maritane have the option of upgrading one night and staying at Tshukudu at a reduced rate. Leave the kids behind (there’s a solid perimeter fence, they’ll be all right).
But Legacy is not entirely about luxury lodges and romantic getaways. The Bakubung staff provide the local Tapologo Aids clinic in Ledig with meals for all the people who come to collect their antiretroviral medicine on Mondays. They also run a peer-educator programme in the town, using people who work at the lodge to educate their community about HIV/Aids.
They make biofuel from used cooking oil and run their own water treatment plant that treats the sewage from the lodge.
Kwa Maritane is involved with the local primary school, Borite, for which it provides 240 meals a week. The lodge uses solar power for the kitchen and to do laundry and is expanding its glass recycling programme to other items, says Johnson.
We leave Kwa Maritane, the bush and the animals under a yellow midday sun and within two hours we’re back in the heart of Jo’burg. If you’re looking for a weekend getaway, it’s difficult to imagine a better place.
Tarryn Harbour was a guest of Bakubung Lodge and the Legacy Lodge Hotels Group