………aka Fawlty Towers.
You may wonder where does a spoilt Safari Tart go for her Christmas holidays? I needed a place to veg out, do absolutely nothing, get up late, read a lot and turn up for breakfast at 10.30am. I also wanted to feel like I belonged and be entertained a little. Sounds good doesn’t it? I found just the place - a real life Fawlty Towers complete with Basil and other crazy characters in the countryside near Cape Town.
I was really impressed with Garden Route Game Lodge. It is of course ’soft safari’, as are all the game reserves in the Western Cape. It is because this populated region doesn’t have tracts of spare land the size of small European countries - like Kruger Park - in which the largest African animals can roam in complete freedom.
Garden Route Game Lodge is within sight of a major highway, yet as you drive in and see some elephants and look over domed hills to distant mountains, the memory that you turned off a major road just minutes before, fades into insignificance.
The transformation is that quick.
Visitors often ‘do‘ Cape Town in three days as part of a South African holiday, which is of course impossible. It also means you don’t get to venture into the further reaches of the Western Province and find special places like Bushman’s Kloof.
In the Cederberg Mountains, 4 hours (168 miles) north of Cape Town, is a wild-west movie set kind of place, with sand tracks of red-earth winding through giant wind-sculpted boulders. Perfect ambush country. It’s in this landscape that I found Bushman’s Kloof. Bushman’s Kloof reserve is a privately owned conservation success story, as a result of its protection of indigenous flora and fauna and its great store of historic bushman paintings. The Bushmen (now referred collectively as San) lived in these Cederberg Mountains many thousands of years ago, and left a legacy of rock art in caves and overhangs. This reserve alone has 130 ancient art sites dating back 10,000 years and the area has been declared a South African Natural Heritage Site.
Aquila Private Game Reserve is just under two hours drive north-east of Cape Town and is probably the most visited safari destination within reach of the city. The terrain is completely different from the coast, because once you have passed over or through the mountains, you enter the Great Karoo. It’s dry and dusty with occasional pointy or flat-topped peaks and beautiful golden escarpments dipping into sandy valleys mottled with small aromatic bushes. Aquila is full of the game that used to roam this dry interior and out of all the reserves within reach of Cape Town, this is the one I enjoyed most.
It is owned by a handsome man with a large ego, who knows how to make big things happen. Aquila is his dream and every year he took one step closer to having the Big Five animals roaming his land. He finally achieved this and has lions in their own large patch of hillside, through which the safari vehicles drive.
There I was driving up the West Coast road one hour out of Cape Town, and I saw a sign ‘Buffelsfontein Game & Nature Reserve’. Now I’m not one to let a game reserve pass me by without knowing who they are and what they offer, so I pulled in.
The gates opened as if by themselves, so I drove up the pale yellow sand track and found myself outside the reception face to face with an ostrich. They may look bird-brained and daft, but beware of this enormous flightless bird, as it can rip your guts out with its extra-long toe claw, and can peck you black and blue if it takes a liking to your glinting jewellery.
With this in mind, I tried skirting around the ostrich, but she hissed at me until I backed up. Out came Daniel the ranger, brandishing a broomstick - the chosen weapon against an ostrich.
