04 May 2024

South Africa

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A safari with real Pride

It's a private game reserve set in Africa's most glorious landscape - where animals never culled and malaria is unknown. Paradise on earth? Author Philippa Gregory had no doubts..

1 See the sights on safari 2 Rhinos 3 The Shamwari Lodge

THE 'SERECT SEASON' IS WHAT they call the June-July- August months in South Africa. Our summer is their winter and on the days we were there it was like the finest of English spring days: bright sunshine, cool air, warm enough to eat outside and yet fresh.

It’s a well-kept secret: in Cape Town there were few tourists and yet the restaurants and shops around the Table Bay Hotel in the renovated marina area were bustling with locals enjoying the fine weather.

The Table Bay Hotel is the centrepiece of this little jewel and it is heaven. We had a suite overlooking the harbour which boasted bedroom, balcony, living room, dining room and even library.

I was, as we authors like to call it, ‘working’, which meant a visit to the brand new Cape Town Book Fair. Travelling with my husband Anthony, we took a day out to visit the wine country and stay at a charming B&B at Franschhoek.

Like its sister property, the Constantia in Cape Town itself, the Franschhoek is hidden away but behind the sliding electric gates is a little haven.

They’re both run by wonderfully eccentric women so you feel that you are staying at your rich sister’s house. It’s luxurious without being pretentious; there is everything you might want but it feels homely.

Unspolied africa

On to Johannesburg and a total change of style with a stay at The Saxon Hotel. This is luxury at the heights. The Presidential suite is so named because Nelson Mandela spent some months there. Oprah Winfrey stays when she is in town.

Utterly spoiled by the hospitality, I went on with my son Adam to the Eastern Cape to fulfil an ambition I have had ever since I discovered he shared my love of wildlife.

I have longed to take him on safari and at last I had my chance. There are many private game reserves as well as the famous national ones but I noticed that every time I told my South African hosts that I was visiting Shamwari, there was a small intake of breath and a knowing smile, like that of one secret addict meeting another.

‘You’ll love it,’ people whispered. By the time we boarded the plane to Port Elizabeth, I was expecting something spectacular. They were right. I did love it. I weepingly, on my knees, adored it. First, the place: it is 20,000 hectares of the most beautiful African countryside with high bare hills, thickly wooded slopes and wide dry plains. It looks like a movie of unspoiled Africa.

It looks as if David Attenborough, Meryl Streep and Virginia McKenna might all pop up with Ernest Hemingway following them.

It is so wonderfully the real thing that it looks like film. Not even nature is disagreeable. There are only a few snakes in this Eden and they are rarely seen.

There is no mosquito in the ointment – Shamwari is malaria-free. If this is sounding like Paradise then I’m glad. It is Paradise. It is a private game reserve, the dream of a single man, Adrian Gardiner, who transformed his own farm and home into a small game lodge and then bought neighbouring farms to convert them into a game reserve.

He restored the natural vegetation, transferred wild indigenous animals from other overcrowded areas and let the eco-system balance itself. Now you can see all the chief wild animals of South Africa at Shamwari and they live freely, never fed, never culled. In time there will be too many lions – as top predators theirs is the best lifestyle.

For choice, anyone would be a lion or a tourist. There is a tremendous range of accommodation in four centres from the romantic, tented lodges at the riverside to the grand house on the plains, Adrian’s original family home.

A magical experience

We stayed at the to-die-for Eagle’s Crag, a series of small roundhouse lodges set on the side of a crag where the decking for the private outside plunge pool (well, of course you have a private outside plunge pool) is in the tops of the trees where monkeys swing and wild birds call.

One day we saw a lion south of the lodge. The next day, his tracks were to the north. In the night he had quietly walked past the hotel, through the grounds, to where he wanted to be.

In order to prevent any unfortunate collisions, guests are escorted to and from the main lodge to their rooms after dark by an armed warden. It adds a wonderful frisson to the after dinner stroll back to your room to think that a lion may be doing the same thing.

There are two game drives a day, at dawn when you pile into the open safari truck in the darkness and watch the sun rise and the animals stir for another day, and the evening drive when you come home in darkness with bright eyes shining from the bush.

It is the expertise of the rangers that makes this a magical experience. Our ranger, Hendrik von Wielligh, himself born and bred on a small African farm in Namibia, knew the sound of every bird, could track wild animals, and led us, on foot, to a magically close encounter with an elephant.

There is something truly wonderful about meeting, in their own land, these extraordinary animals. We saw a herd of elephant led by a big matriarch, her son so small that he could stand under her belly.

They passed so close to the truck that we could have reached out and touched them. More scarily, they could have reached in and touched us.

They didn’t because the discipline and cleanliness of the reserve means that none of the animals associates the trucks or the lodges with food. After every stop the game wardens scour the ground so that we did, indeed, leave nothing but footprints. We saw a pride of lions lolling in the evening sun, cubs sprawling and playing with their dozing mother.

Everything we dreamt of

We saw everything we had dreamt of: hippo, rhino, giraffe, a leopard and one shadowy evening, a cheetah posed at the top of a cliff, as beautiful as a statue.

And we saw things of great beauty that I did not expect – hyena , fox and an African hare. To drive around a corner and see a great herd of impala or springbok grazing, with the telegraph- pole heads of giraffe poking out of the bush behind them, is a wonderful experience.

A nearby resort offers golf and swimming. This is Bushman Sands, under the same ownership but with the ambition of transforming the small town of Alicedale into a resort to bring prosperity to the locals.

Not only are the owners contributing to the preservation of wildlife and the greening of the countryside, they are providing employment and opportunities for local people.

At Bushman Sands you can take an evening sail on the river. Our captain steered and pointed out the wildlife – a wonderful soaring fish eagle, hippo, and dozens of scampering bush pigs who called Pumba.

Our own barmaid prepared appetisers as we cruised and we sat on the top deck enjoying the peace of the golden sunset. As we left Bushman Sands they learned they were to be the winter training camp for the South African rugby team – another step towards greater prosperity.

But all I could think about was whether they were ready for an annual literary festival – and whether I could host it?

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