For luxury in the African bush, it's Chitwa Chitwa

I wrote this entry after returning from Honeymoon, but the posting date coincides with when we were actually experiencing what's described here.

Camping has never been for me.

Don't get me wrong, I love the great outdoors. Looking at it, taking pleasant strolls through it, watching David Attenborough talk about it ... but I have no need to forgo pleasures like hot water and good linen to get close to it. In recent years there's been quite a trend for "glamping" ... tents, but with all the accoutrements of a luxury hotel. It's a movement that started in the African bush, and there's plenty of opportunity out here for upscale roughing it. But that is not, thank heavens, what we got at Chitwa Chitwa, where the only rough item in the place is probably the exfoliating scrubs in the spa.

Chitwa Chitwa was once a family home, the centre of a vast private game reserve. As times changed and safari tourism took off, the Brink family followed the pattern of many in this area, expanding their lodge with guest accommodation and building a pattern of activities around game drives. The Sabi Sand region is filled with lodges like this, most fairly small and working together to expose their guests to the animals criss-crossing this enormous, fence-free land.

While I have no real comparison, only seeing the other lodges from the outside, I suspect the Sabi Sand experience doesn't get much better than Chitwa, whether we're talking luxury, quality of the staff or the proximity to animals.

The lodge is actually more of a village; a cluster of thatched buildings spread around one side of the biggest watering hole in the area. That fact alone provides a game-watching advantage. We watched families of hippos, herds of buffalo and elephant, and even lions, from the comfort of our own deck. Each of the nine suites is its own detached building. All are different in size and decor, yet share features like private decks and plunge pools, king-sized beds under cathedral ceilings wreathed in mosquito netting and high-concept modern bathrooms, with all of the walls facing the watering hole of glass to make the whole suite a viewing platform. Ours was particularly enormous, as it's actually two bedroom suites, each leading off a comfortable sitting room with overstuffed couches and piles of coffee table books, sharing a deck big enough to host a cocktail party for everyone else in the lodge, if you were in the mood.

The decor here, and throughout the lodge, is a quirky mix of traditional African and modern art. Our suite had black walls, abstract paintings, rich upholstery (including a faux fur bedspread), rococo gilt mirrors, an enormous silver candelabra next to a cocktail tray crowded with crystal, polished spirals of kudu horns and a towering carved tribal figure. A strange, dark mixture, but it worked. Probably because during the day, the glass walls drenched everything with light and spectacle, and at night the staff let down the mosquito netting, transforming the bed into a giant, rose-petal strewn white tent. Given the odd sleeping patterns necessitated by the drive schedule, we spent more time in this room than in any other on honeymoon. It deserved and rewarded our attention. And that's probably one of my top tips for safari; you'll spend the middle of every day in your room, so make sure it's nice.

Of course, if the room hadn't been quite so beguiling, we might have spent a bit more time in the public areas. All of these continued with the modern African rococo style, distinguished in many places by skulls and bones of former occupants of the reserve, gilded and transformed into chandeliers or striking objets d'art.

At the centre of things is the main game lodge. Its primary room is a combination sitting room, bar and dining room, one area flowing into another, all continuing the place's oversized proportions. We gathered every night here for cocktails and conversation. The guests ... affluent, well educated and from a variety of countries with a range of fascinating jobs ... were an interesting bunch, bringing almost as much entertainment to the evenings as we'd had on the game drives. The night we ate in the dining room there were more than 20 of us at the table. Another night we ate as couples at lantern lit tables on the wide decks, and our third night our individual tables were arranged in a 3/4 circle around a bonfire in a wooden walled, roofless enclosure called a boma, set up behind the main lodge.

The bar and living area opens up onto a thatched, open sided veranda as wide as the building behind it. Clusters of thickly-cushioned couches and armchairs sit here, separated by yet another bar; this one used for morning and afternoon coffee and tea. Around the corner, also under a thatched overhang, is a check-in desk backed by some oversized tribal masks. Off here, there's a luxuriously appointed library with the only television in the place (necessary for some people checking rugby world cup results) and a shared computer with internet access thanks to a slow but steady satellite link.

Between all of that and the watering hole, there's a field of decking, part including an infinity pool that overlooks the watering hole, the rest just wide-open area for strolling, lounging and watching the animals. Across that, continuing along the arc of the watering hole, is the dining pavilion. Here, with gravel crunching under your feet, thatch cooling you above and white gauze curtains blowing in the breeze, you settle in for breakfast and lunch, indulging in delicious food and copious wine as the watering hole puts on its own show. (Of that, more in the next entry.)

A path of wooden decking runs from here, away from the water and up a gentle hill. There are gardens and ponds here, taking partial shade from a high stone wall and a few trees. A thatched cottage off to one side is the spa. At the top of the little incline is another large, thatched pavilion, holding a gift shop filled with tribal arts and crafts, and Chitwa Chitwa clothing on one side, and the business office on the other. There's a towering breezeway dividing them in the centre, dominated by a chandelier of elephant bones and framed by sculptures of cheetahs on each side. This is the portal through which we depart for game drives, and where Dino welcomes us back each evening with the signature cocktail of the day.

As night falls, the hippos bellow, strange things splash in the night and we stick close to Andreis as he escorts us from lodge to suite. We are in the lap of magnificently African luxury, but in one respect, this is no different from camping. We are visitors here. The land belongs to the big things prowling the darkness.