SLEEPY SANCTUARY
This Rustenburg lodge is a lovely place to laze
THABA Legae means Mountain Home in Tswana, but its owners, Millicent and Israel Shai, want you to think of it as “your home in the mountains”.
Their handsome, somewhat Tuscaninspired lodge just outside Rustenburg is surrounded by the small mountains of the North West, open veld and not much else. It’s a good place to do nothing.
Professionals who work at practices in town — she’s a dental therapist and he’s an optometrist — and parents of two teenage children, they love their busy double-career lives, especially the running of their lodge.
Millicent, who welcomes us at the front desk, is addicted to another kind of running as well — she has just completed her eighth Comrades marathon.
“I used to be so lazy but then I joined a running club and they taught me other things … like marathons.”
Israel, a jovial raconteur who loves his red wine, also doubles up as the handyman. Our first glimpse of him is up on a ladder, replacing a light bulb in the dining room.
The original plan, Millicent tells us later over a homestyle dinner of fish, salad and vegetables, was to fulfil her dream of owning “some land where we could live and keep chickens and goats, just like my granny’s place where I grew up”.
It was the magnificent old wild fig on this piece of veld that clinched the deal when they went real-estate shopping in 2000. “There was nothing here,” Israel explains.
Seven years ago, they built a house with five bedrooms — and before Millicent knew it they were running a lodge.
The rest of it took shape around a courtyard, with the fig tree as its central point. Now they also offer conference and wedding facilities, complete with a chapel — all designed by Israel — and have hosted the likes of Julius Malema and his EFF members.
Top tips: Ask for one of the rooms not in the main house, such as one of the chalets by the pool. The house gets noisy in the morning and breakfast preparations can be an unwanted alarm. Also, ask for filter coffee. They have it but, if you don’t ask, it’s Nescafé in little sachets. — AM