THE ELEPHANT POINT DIFFERENCE
A new wave of lodges on the northeastern side of the Kruger National Park illustrates that game parks are back
● As Covid recedes, it has revealed some interesting shifts in the game lodges around the Kruger National Park in Mpumalanga.
In particular, there’s been a flurry of activity around
Elephant Point, on the northeastern side of the park, about 10km from the Paul Kruger gate.
Elephant Point lies alongside the Sabie River, and is named after the elephants that drink there. Investors have piled in, attracted by the proximity to Skukuza and Mbombela. Many owners spent months during the pandemic at the villas — as good a place as any to weather the lockdowns.
At the moment, ownership is split 50:50 between local and international owners (mostly expats).
The most famous overseas investor is former England cricket captain Kevin Pietersen, whose R35m Umganu Lodge was recently listed on the AltVest investment platform.
On a recent visit of our group to Elephant Point, Legacy Hotels & Resorts put up half our number in Lamula Lodge and the other half in Ubuntu Lodge next door.
Lamula means “orange” in Tsonga, the local language, and the colour bursts out in places. The bedroom light fittings echo Murano glass, with tinges of orange and brown.
The décor is safari chic, with earthy textures and fittings. The villas each have spacious bathrooms, outside showers, large bathtubs and their own pools and bomas.
As the name suggests, no visitor is likely to come away without plenty of elephant sightings. On our first full day we saw matriarchs protecting their offspring, with no male in sight.
But it wasn’t just elephants: we also chanced on hyena mothers caring for their suckling cubs, and nearby a large, lumpy buffalo was nursing his exclusion from the herd.
Our guide, Romeo, knew the backstory of everything. He clearly loves the bush, having grown up two towns away with parents who both worked in the Kruger his father as a policeman and his mother as a housekeeper.
But the pressure on the rangers is intense. For many overseas visitors, a visit to the park is their only shot at seeing the Big Five. In our case,
Romeo was able to deliver three of them.
A drive through the area reveals the extensive investment that has been made there, with impressive Moroccan-style lodges vying with more traditional villas. Personal chefs and on-demand delivery services illustrate the step rise in “luxury bush” experiences.
Apparently, we’re told, the first question often asked when guests arrive is whether there is Netflix (spoiler: there is, thanks to the seamless Wi-Fi). This is not the safari of the 1970s with tents, camper beds, shared ablution facilities and tinned food.
At Ubuntu Lodge, the private chef serves up fish better than you’ll find in most fine dining restaurants in Joburg. The pan-fried kingklip that featured on the first night and the springbok carpaccio with deep-fried capers and marinated feta on the second are a case in point.
We finished our stay with a trail walk, and the hyena tracks illustrated
why you still need to be on the alert, even with a guard accompanying you.
It’s easy especially at night, cocooned in your luxury villa to forget you’re in the bush. But then you hear the hippos and hyenas and remember precisely where you are.
The writer was a guest of Legacy Hotels & Resorts’ Elephant Point and
was flown there courtesy of Airlink