BORN TO BE WILD

The Serengeti, the oldest and most popular National Park in Tanzania, is the natural playground of the new Meliá Serengeti Lodge, that opened a few months ago to offer the greatest African experience and to give us the opportunity to learn from the wild. 'Karibu'.

Ajuma, the guest star of our fashion stor y, walking to the infinity pool. She wears a Milles

Collines tunic dress. To the left, a

family of lions.

Today we’ve seen everything. It's just been absolutely incredible! Giraffes, elephants, buffalo, jackals... even a leopard!’ No sooner do the guests of the Meliá Serengeti Lodge step out of the jeep than they begin to excitedly share their safari experiences. We’ve just arrived, but before we could even finish our refreshing iced hibiscus tea welcome drinks, we had already gained stories of our own: we’ve witnessed a lioness in action, hunting a zebra. The other guests gaze at us with envy. We’ve also seen impala and gazelles, a lone fox, a family of hyenas dozing in the mud and birds of incredible colours. And, of course, hundreds of zebras and wildebeest. All this took place in the 36 kilometers between the small airport of Seronera and the Meliá Serengeti Lodge, a 50-minute journey that can take to up to two hours (or more) if you stop to enjoy the trip through the savannah. A waiter approaches to take us to a table at the Savannah Grill. ‘You must be hungry’, he says, apologising for the interruption. We are, indeed, but it’s difficult to focus on the menu, with its wealth of Mediterranean and Swahili dishes. We’re enraptu- red by the landscape. Beyond the sunny terrace and infinity pool, the great plain of the Mbalageti River Valley sprawls uninterrupted.

Positioned on three natural terraces on the slopes of the Nyamuma Hills, the architecture of the new Meliá Serengeti Lodge harmoniously adapts to the soft curves of a land that stretches down to the legendary plains of the Serengeti. Here the design, greenery and stonework are closely intertwined with the wilderness. ‘During the hotel’s construction, the noise drove the animals away, but they’ve already returned. At night a leopard prowls the area’, the hotel’s general manager, César Martínez, tells us. ‘I love sitting here with binoculars and watching the incredible parade of animals’.

In the distance, the bushes appear to move, stepping forwards in single file. ‘They’re wildebeests. They travel north, towards the Maasai Mara, following the rains’, César explains with a satisfied smile upon seeing our surprise, and hands me his binoculars. ‘If you want a pair you can ask at reception’. Martínez, a lovely and charismatic Murcian, left his job at Meliá Zanzibar, the Meliá group’s first hotel in Tan-

zania, to fully immerse himself in the development of this exciting project. ‘This hotel is groundbreaking. There’s nothing else like it out there’, he tells us proudly. ‘We opened at the end of December in 2017, and for the past few months we’ve had full occupancy’.

A responsible business model for hospitality is committed to enhancing the development of the local environment, and that is exactly the spirit that inspires Meliá Serengeti Lodge, Meliá Hotels International’s first sustainability focused hotel.

The hotel is minimalistic in both its visual impact and environmental footprint. During the hotel’s construction not a single tree was cut down; just moved to another site. The stones used for the walls were extracted from the very same ground. The rooms are designed for natural ventilation, eliminating the need for air conditioners. The hotel also have facilities to generate its own energy, covering around half of all the hotel’s energy needs. “The efficient resource management is one of the greatest responsibilities we face to reduce our impact on the environment”, states Martínez. What’s more, the hotel incinerates waste from the kitchen, transforming it into compost for the farmers that supply it with produce. The food is almost 90% locally sourced. The coasters, baskets and all other decorative details were created by local craftspeople. In order to avoid the use of plastic bottles, the hotel has a bottling plant capable of processing 500 litres of water a day, and has recently purchased a plastics crusher. The goal: zero emissions. Zero. What’s more, the spa uses natural products made by a cooperative of women in Zanzibar, and collaborates with Born to Learn, a small NGO that fosters education in the most disadvantaged communities in the region of Kilimanjaro.

Beyond the views—unquestionably the star feature, with each of the 50 rooms boasting a terrace overlooking the great plain—the spirit of Africa emanates from every corner. The local character is a fundamental part of the decoration, the food -and the staff. Many of the employees are local to the area. Ja mes Meas Saboky, a young Maasai who works in the kitchen,

tells us the story of his people. ‘Hundreds of years ago there was a great drought in the valleys of the Nile River, where the Maasai used to live. The wisest chiefs gathered together under the great acacia tree and saw that the leaves that faced -south were the greenest, and so decided to set out in that di rection. The search for fertile pastures for their cattle led them to Cairo, which in Maa means, ‘Where are you going?’, then to Khartoum in Sudan, meaning, ‘Where can I find you?’, and onwards to Ethiopia (‘already went’), Kenya (‘before’) and Nairobi (‘a very cold place’), until they finally arrived in the 17th century at the Serengeti, the ‘land without end’, and Ngorongoro where ‘they saw clouds’.

The Serengeti, declared a National Park in 1951 and a World Heritage Site in 1981, is one of the most complex and wellpreserved ecosystems on the planet. Its ‘endless plains’ are known all over the world for their location along the great migration route that each year, once the dry season commences, leads more than a million wildebeest and hundreds of thousands of zebras and gazelles from the south of the Serengeti to the north, reaching the Maasai Mara in Kenya. The month of May is the best time to witness this spectacular natural event. But with one of the largest concentrations of predators in the world, encounters with the ‘Big Five’–elephants, lions, leopards, buffalo and rhinos– are guaranteed in any season.

To go out on safari you have to get up early, better before sunrise. It’s also important to have a good guide who can explain what goes unnoticed to the eye. ‘When you live in the savannah, you have so much time to learn’, says Richard Yoeza Msuya, the best guide at the Meliá Serengeti Lodge and, without a doubt, one of the best in the whole Serengeti.

The only thing the guests of the Meliá Serengeti Lodge ‘complain’ about is the weight they gain during their stays. Chef Bouya’s delicious meals are to blame. ‘I like to create my own interpretations of local Swahili dishes that are heavily i-nfluenced by Eastern cuisine, and adapt them for interna tional palates’, the always-smiling Senegalese chef confesses. He runs the hotel’s three dining areas. Open from breakfast to dinnertime, the Savannah Grill offers pizzas, wraps, salads and a colourful buffet that gives each guest the opportunity to concoct their own culinary journey from Africa to the Mediterranean. The Boma is a nod to traditional Maasai buildings, with an open-air circular space surrounding a fireplace, allowing guests to dine under the stars. Dinners for special occasions are celebrated in the barbecue area.

In the evening, around the Boma fire, the guests continue to exchange stories about their days. The conversations spread to the bar, matched by the rhythmic croaking of the frogs. But now it’s time to retire and rest, and let the leopard prowl freely through the illusive calm of the African night. Tomorrow another exciting day of safari adventures awaits.