An oasis of cool in the wilds of the Kalahari Desert
In one of the most extreme environments on Earth, a luxurious desert camp is leading the charge
In 300,000 acres of desert, criss-crossed with rocky mountains and tangled thornveld, tracking animals isn’t easy. Unless, that is, you are being led by two men who have spent their lives in the bush and can decipher indentations in the sand as easily as you or I might read a newspaper.
My Afrikaans guide, Juan Venter, and Tswana tracker, Piet Toto, have senses almost as fine as the creatures they track. Every now and then they stop, turning their ears to pinpoint a remote cry, scrunching their eyes to recognise a dot on the horizon, flaring their nostrils to detect a scent wafting in the desert dust. “In an area this size,” Venter explains, “you have to learn to sense like the animal you’re tracking. You have to get inside its head.”
We’ve been driving a few hours through the massive expanse of Tswalu in South Africa’s Northern Cape — the largest private game reserve in southern Africa, owned by the Oppenheimer family — when along the red-sand road Toto spots the fresh pawprints of a lioness. For a hundred yards or so, the prints are perfectly clear in the late-afternoon light. Then they vanish into the golden grass. “At this time of day she’s probably doing one of two things,” Venter surmises. “Going to hide her cubs in the hills for the night, or walking to drink water. Let’s see.”
The Kalahari Desert is one of the most extreme environments on Earth: 360,000 square miles of sand that blows all the way from the Equator into South Africa, via Namibia and Botswana. Venture into it on a summer’s day and temperatures can top 48C, while winter nights drop to -14C. In most parts, there’s no water. But at Tswalu there is, thanks to seasonal Korannaberg Mountains streams and borehole-pumped waterholes that help the reserve’s protected creatures to survive.
Thrillingly, it’s beside one of these little waterholes that the lioness is resting, just as Venter predicted. And even more thrillingly, she has two cute three-month-old cubs with her that want to do little else but play; nibbling their mother’s tail as it flickers in annoyance, licking her nose as she growls, and jumping like little ponies over her prostrate front legs.
At most game reserves, seeing lion cubs is special. But here it’s even more so because 50 years ago any lion here would have been shot. The Green Kalahari, as this area is known because of its slightly higher rainfall, was historically utilised for hardy cattle and game farming. Lions, and other predators such as wild dogs and leopard, were regarded as a nuisance and swiftly dispatched.
Until, that is, Stephen Boler came along. The Lancastrian, who made his first fortune selling cut-price tyre and exhaust systems in the 1970s and at one time was the biggest shareholder of Manchester City football club, loved wildlife, and in 1995, recognising the plight of the rhino, decided to create a reserve for them by buying 35 farms. When the De Beers heir Nicholas Oppenheimer was invited to visit in 1997, Boler had removed hundreds of miles of fence, and stocked his adjoining 200,000 acres with sable and roan antelope, lion, zebra and cheetah, and finally rhino.
When Boler died a year later, Oppenheimer was asked by his executor to take on Tswalu. The billionaire philanthropist recognised the opportunity not only to continue the extraordinary project — last year adding a now acclaimed restaurant into the mix — but to spend more time in a place that he, too, had fallen in love with. As he put it: “There’s a sense of contentment that comes from being surrounded by so much space. One savours its colours and textures, the myriad sounds, and the deep silences of the wilderness.”
That the Oppenheimers savour such space and quiet makes it pretty special for guests too. There are just two places to stay in Tswalu: Tarkuni, a two-storey homestead sleeping a private group of ten, and the Motse camp, whose nine stone villas can house 18. Because each group of guests is given their own vehicle, private guide and tracker, they can do pretty much what the Oppenheimers themselves do, from horse riding and walking to star-gazing and picnicking in the dunes.
Wanting to see as much rare wildlife as possible, I choose to drive out (wrapped in blankets in the nippy 4C desert air) at dawn and dusk when desert creatures are most active. While a high percentage of guests see the big black-maned lions of the Kalahari, and if they’re lucky rare desert rhino, this is not Big Five country. For a start, there are no hippos or elephants — they wouldn’t survive the extremes.
But with great guides at the wheel of your Land Cruiser, there’s plenty to see. Driving around the tough camelthorn thickets of the Korannaberg, we see kudus, mountain zebras, rarely spotted little brown hyenas and baboons. On the wooded savannah — fragrant in September with the powdery sweet perfume of white blackthorn and yellow camelthorn flowerballs — we come across a pair of resting cheetahs, their stomachs full of freshly killed oryx. We are outstared by grumpy buffaloes and inquisitive giraffes, watch hundreds of eland thundering across the plains followed by a spotted hyena, and even spot three (highly endangered) wild dogs trotting along a sandy road.
And in between all this action, I have time to myself: to lie about like a gecko in the wintery sunlight by the pool, to browse natural history books, to admire Stone Age hand axes in the little museum — and just to sit, relishing the elegant, simple beauty of my room.
Unlike many contemporary African lodges that emblazon their interiors with bright colours and designs, Tswalu’s Johannesburg-based designers, Savile Row, have focused on muted calming shades, natural materials and clean Scandinavian shapes. On curvaceous stone walls hangs local art from the Oppenheimers’ private collection. Beside wood-fired stoves and large windows sit rattan chairs and linen chaises longues. (Oddly, much of the furniture was sourced from Bali; I’m told Tswalu’s new six-bedroom tented camp, Luape, opening in next year, will feature designs that are made locally.)
The food is undoubtedly local thanks to Tswalu’s chef, Jan Hendrik van der Westhuizen, host of a food magazine, TV show and Michelin-starred restaurant in Nice. The Oppenheimers’ proudly South African approach marries perfectly with his. Not only are the plates designed by van der Westhuizen and the wooden food-boards hewn by local craftsmen, but the local staff have been trained by him. The ingredients have been sourced from farming communities nearby — from the Kalahari lamb sizzled on starlit barbecues and the pistachios in the ice cream served by the pool, to the creamy butter churned in the aptly named desert outpost Hotazel an hour away.
There is certainly no restaurant that looks more South African than Klein Jan. Situated at the heart of Tswalu, close enough to the airstrip for foodies with private jets to flit in, the restaurant’s main building looks much as it did when it was built over a century ago. When I arrive at the little white cottage, fronted with a stoep (veranda) and roofed in corrugated iron, linen hangs on a washing line and an old windmill creaks in the hot breeze. On a table under a tree, there is a jug of warm water and herbs to wash my hands, before cocktails in a cosy, farm-style room hung with copper pans.
The location of the restaurant itself is a surprise for every guest, and I don’t want to blow that revelation here. But the culinary journey to it was one of the most inventive I’ve been on, featuring secret drawers holding amuse-bouches, a cellar lined with bottles of preserves, and even a cheese room lined with a thousand South African cookbooks. I took my 78-year-old mother with me, and watching her eyes widen and her grin get bigger as surprise after surprise unfolded was the highlight of my trip.
Until, that is, the next day, when we sat in the sand watching a troop of habituated meerkats scurrying in and out of their burrows, hunting for scorpions and digging for insects. Then we saw endangered black rhinos protected, behind the scenes, by an army of conservationists and technology. And finally, as twinkling planets started to glisten in the skies, we got a radio call to report that an anti-poaching scout had spotted a pangolin.
The creature I’ve spent my life dreaming of seeing was curled up in a bush, trying to disguise itself — little wonder, given all eight species are now classed as vulnerable to extinction, thanks to Chinese demand for “traditional medicine”. I spent just five minutes watching it, and my photograph of it is terrible. But seeing the creature with my own eyes was an incredibly moving experience, as was the realisation that it wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the will and funding of conservation-minded philanthropists in places like Tswalu.
To discover, on my return, that every room in the reserve is almost always fully booked, with a waiting list of three years for Tarkuni, should have come as no surprise. The experiences here are like nowhere else on Earth.