Hoedspruit, Limpopo - There are two groups of people I have made it my life’s mission to kill on safari: guides who describe impala as the “McDonald’s of the bush” (because of the black “Ms” on their bums) and guests who expect to see the Big Five on every game drive.
My mission will never be fulfilled. Guides might get the message after I’ve shot a passel or two but there’s always going to be at least one tourist on a game-viewing truck that will overlook a gem of the bush in hope of seeing a lion.
There’s a third group: Those who climb on your truck and tell you about the amazing sightings they had the day before. Then hang their cameras with high-quality digital backscreens over your shoulder to prove they aren’t fibbing.
For them is the highest pain in Hell reserved.
Somehow, though, thoughts of mayhem become tempered when one returns to camp to find good food and joie de vivre but – more importantly for me – a cellar that would make a wine-snob drool.
Yep. I found that recently and I found it just outside Hoedspruit.
It is into the combined military-civilian airfield that I flew (via SA Express direct from Cape Town or Joburg) into Hoedspruit. The foreign tourists who were on board the twin-engined propeller aircraft were immediately captivated because of the impala and warthog that dotted the grass verges of the run and taxiways.
Laurence Saad is a Joburg boykie who made his money as the owner of casinos across Africa – in places such as Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and the Congo.
“The bush, though, was always my passion. The highlight of our year when we were children was when our dad took us to the Kruger National Park for our annual holiday,” he says.
He got the opportunity to indulge that passion and, just over two decades ago, bought a 150-hectare game farm as a “holiday home” on the road between Phalaborwa and Hoedspruit.
The region hosts a plethora of private game lodges, most of which – over the past decade – have elected to drop their game fences and become part of the Greater Kruger National Park, through their membership of Associated Private Nature Reserves.
Saad’s former bush retreat forms part of the 40 000ha Balule Nature Reserve. The family home has been transformed into Ezulwini (the Zulu word for “paradise”) Billy’s Lodge. Billy’s, one of two Saad operates on the reserve, is named after his late brother. “My daughter shares my love of the bush. She was at school in Seattle, Washington, and told me she wanted to come home to South Africa. Specifically, she wanted to come back here.
“We started converting this place but, looking at the Sabi Sands model, I realised we needed a river property as well.”
He bought a much larger adjacent farm, with frontage on the Olifants River. At the same time construction on the River Lodge was beginning, Saad and others began agitating for establishment of a conservancy – an area of land where all internal fences were lowered, giving wildlife unrestricted movement.
Balule was created and eight years ago the fences separating it from the Klaserie section of the Kruger National Park were taken down. Individual land ownership rights remain and owners can elect whether they will allow their neighbours to cross onto their properties.
Ezulwini has traversing rights with two neighbours following accepted game-viewing protocols (such as a maximum of two vehicles on a sighting, first on the scene calls it in to the others).
Wide ranges and fluctuating environmental conditions mean that one cannot be guaranteed seeing the Big Five – so named because they are traditionally the five most dangerous African animals to hunt – even though they might be regularly encountered in the area.
Also, animals like lion and elephant can migrate significant distances in a day while leopard, buffalo and (especially black) rhino are often solitary and stick to thick bush. Get to see three of the Big Five on a two-day bush getaway and you can count yourself lucky, see all five and you are either almightily blessed or the focus of the reserve is foreign tourists rather than animals.
I saw three at Balule while staying at Ezulwini Billy’s Lodge; elephant – including a memorable encounter with one that gate-crashed a sundowner session, a herd of incontinent buffalo and a black rhino that mock-charged our vehicle.
For those of you who have not been fortunate enough to spend time at a luxury lodge, let me describe the indolence. More often than not, you arrive shortly after noon.
That’s cool because lunch is generally served at about 2pm. You then go back to your air-conditioned room/suite/cottage for a nap or take a swim on either your private plunge pool or in the communal facility – drinks are served there and the wi-fi is generally better there than in the rooms.
At about 4pm, you get yourself ready for the afternoon game drive.
This is usually the best time to see animals, so everybody attends.
There is a sundowner break – you’re asked for your choice of phuza at lunchtime and get back to lodge after dark.
After freshening up, it’s either along the elevated walkway to the covered lookout hanging over a dry riverbed for pre-dinner drinks or into the boma for a happily boozy braai.
Billy’s Lodge does this wonderfully because the staff sings and dances as food is served and wine flows. And, at Billy’s, the wine certainly can flow. Saad is a serious collector and there is a beautiful, well-stocked subterranean cellar that escaped a huge fire which destroyed part of the lodge in 2010.
For serious oenophiles, there’s a private selection on sale.
So things go on – not usually too late as most visitors are not used to the open air and excitement – and they have to be ready to leave on a game drive the next morning by 5.30.
Guests are escorted from the boma to their rooms or suites – I was accommodated in one of the latter and a real treat it was – and as they follow the well-lit paths, the surrounding trees echo with the hoots of Scops owls and fiery-necked nightjars.
There are always fewer people on the morning game drives than those in the afternoon.
This means I get to spend some solo-truck time with a senior guide.
It’s one of those dead quiet days in the bush. However, I get to see some new bird species (including a Steppe eagle sunning itself), we talk a lot of boy bollocks and sometimes share in the silence and space.
That’s why the bush is there.
l For more information on Ezulwini Billy’s Lodge, go to www.ezulwini.com
Jim Freeman, Saturday Star