HORNS APLENTY
Sue de Groot gets into a state of heightened happiness at a KZN Midlands hotel and spa
Cows and wilder creatures cohabit at Brahman Hills
THE great beasts shuffled their hooves in the dust and lowered their horns as we approached. Mothers hustled elastic-kneed calves into a ring fence of protective limbs. A lone bull, regal in his spotted coat, stood guard as we skirted the herd. What fortune, to meet such creatures on their own turf.
When you’re on foot in the territory of wildlife, a brush with a herd of snorting, stamping Nguni cattle is no less thrilling than encountering a pack of pangolins, if you ask me. In the Blue Crane Nature Reserve, free-range cattle are on equal footing with oribi, impala, blesbok, eland, zebra and wildebeest.
We saw all these species and more, but not the leopard, who is shy, and who shares his prey with jackals. We saw many vervet monkeys and a few mongooses. But since this 1 000ha reserve belongs to Brahman Hills Hotel, there are also massive, domeshouldered Brahman bulls that would not look out of place carved in marble on the side of the Parthenon.
Paintings of both Brahman and Nguni cattle grace the walls of the recently redesigned hotel. Once a roadside motel for overnighters, the rooms are now decidedly upmarket. Each opens onto its own tiny garden. Lush fabrics glow with touches of an intense cobalt we immediately named “Brahman blue”.
The same deep blue dominates the spa everyone in the KZN Midlands is talking about. From the outside it looks like a fairly insignificant farm structure, except for the rows of round windows that make it look like a shed-shaped ship about to float off over the fields. The entrance is through a herb garden and over a bridge, beneath which swathes of water descend over sheets of corrugated iron, a remarkable piece of repurposing that trumps any chi-chi water feature.
And inside … were it not for the portholes and their views of pastoral hills stretching to the dove-grey foothills of the Drakensberg, one might be in the belly of a blue whale that recently swallowed a team of Scandinavian renovators and a large peace pill. Pampering does not even begin to describe the atmosphere of this place, or the head-tingling quality of care on tap.
Six resident therapists exfoliated, massaged and pedicured us into blissful somnolence. This was followed by dinner in 89 on Copper, formerly a disused basement beneath the main Brahman Hills building, now a richly refurbished bar, wine cellar and restaurant where executive chef Stacy White (who has worked with some of South Africa’s luminaries, including Margot Janse at Le Quartier Français) presides over a changing menu of mostly home-grown produce turned into delicate works of culinary art.
Our nature walk and picnic took place the next day. With all our senses honed to a point of heightened happiness, you can understand why Brahman and Nguni cattle grazing on the slopes were, to us, just as rare and delightful a find as a snow leopard might be to others. — Sue de Groot was a guest of Brahman Hills