Ask a keen safari traveller for their dream destination and you can stand by for a roll call of the big hitters. Botswana’s Okavango Delta. Kenya’s Masai Mara. Just about anywhere in Zambia. South Africa’s Lowveld in general, and Sabi Sands in particular. The Kgalagadi, for the intrepid.
I’ve been fortunate enough to visit all of those, and am always surprised that one destination rarely makes the list — a place where I’ve enjoyed some of my most remarkable sightings: the Eastern Cape.
Marketed as “frontier country” for the Anglo-Xhosa wars that plagued the region in the mid-1800s, the stretch of countryside between Gqeberha and East London has fast become South Africa’s brave new frontier for big five safaris.
Once home to ostrich and chicory farms, over the past few decades these unviable tracts of land have been bought up and stitched together. Fences have been dropped, landscapes rejuvenated and wildlife reintroduced. It’s a laudable conservation success story. Now throw in the fact that it’s malaria-free and you have a perfect big five bookend to a road trip exploring the popular Garden Route.
There are more than a dozen, mostly private, reserves in the region, but only a handful have the size to offer an authentic big five safari. One where you won’t be admiring the elephants with a backdrop of trucks barrelling down the N2, for instance.
And here Kwandwe Private Game Reserve truly stands out, with about 22,000 hectares of open grassland and subtropical thickets playing host to all of the big five. Though, let’s be honest, you’ll have to be very lucky to spot a shy leopard out here.
But in just a few days you will see rhino, elephant, plains game and predators aplenty. Predators such as the pride of lions I saw on my first trip, chasing down (and almost catching) a cheetah. Or the two cheetah brothers we sighted on my most recent visit, surrounded by a herd of ballsy zebra clearly looking for trouble. It was here too that I saw my first aardwolf, a fantastically shy nocturnal animal, wandering about at sunset.
There are more than a dozen, mostly private reserves, in the region, but only a handful have the size to offer an authentic big five safari
Bellwethers of change
The Eastern Cape is full of surprises. And my recent return to Ecca Lodge was one of the most pleasant.
My son hadn’t been born on my first visit to Kwandwe. Today he’s 12, and Ecca is the perfect family-friendly choice out of Kwandwe’s two lodges. Great Fish River Lodge, perched dramatically on riverside cliffs, is more suited to couples and honeymooners, but Ecca is heaven for families on safari and, just in time for that well-deserved summer break, it’s recently reopened after a major refurbishment.
That’s great news for those who like a little designer chic with their bush experience. Across the lodge’s six suites, two of which are set up with day beds for children, the renovation has brought a welcome dose of contemporary colour and texture. Gone are the rough gabion walls and dark woods, replaced by tones of sand and stone, with an abundance of natural textures in the rough cottons and reed walls.
But the suites are perhaps best enjoyed outdoors on their wide wooden decks.
Ecca is fully fenced, so even nervous travellers needn’t worry about a snooze on the low wooden decks that gaze out over the reserve. A private plunge pool, or outside shower, will take the edge off the summer heat.
Down at the main lodge, which has also had an overhaul, the pool deck gives onto grassy lawns where you’ll find a chest containing a treasure of outdoor games to keep children happy, while fireside lounges offer magical corners for evenings al fresco.
The food at Ecca certainly deserves a mention. For many parents mealtimes are a constant concern when travelling, especially when their progeny are far from adventurous. But at Ecca it’s handled with aplomb, with a separate children’s menu and staff only too happy to flex around the whims of young ones. Adults, however, are in for a treat, with lodge chefs whipping up a daily menu that throws in a few safari staples alongside more contemporary cuisine. You certainly won’t go hungry.
If Ecca’s refurbishment is just one bellwether of new energy in the region’s safari offering, about 180km northwest I find another indication that business is bullish.
Here on the enigmatic plains of Camdeboo, Samara Karoo Reserve has added a third destination to the 27,000ha property with the opening of Plains Camp in July 2023.
Over the past 20 years Sarah and Mark Tompkins have set about transforming this corner of the Karoo, returning degraded farmland to wilderness and reintroducing the wildlife that would once have roamed free. They began with antelope and cheetah, later adding elephant and lion to create a remarkable big five destination in the most unlikely of landscapes.
Those landscapes were, for me, the highlight of Plains Camp, pitched in the far southern reaches of the reserve a 45-minute drive from the Samara’s two luxury lodges.
Plains Camp is made up of four free-standing tents, set on wooden decks and spaced neatly apart from the main dining and lounge area. It’s an under-canvas experience, so there’s a little rusticity to be expected, but each tent is filled with thoughtful creature comforts.
To start with, there’s a flush loo, a deal-breaker for many when considering anything claiming to be camping. A washbasin and jugs filled with water are enough for a morning face-splash, while out the back flap you’ll find a private shower enclosure, where the canvas bucket-shower will be filled with hot water on request.
Indoors, iron bedsteads come draped in crisp cotton and a plush sheep’s fleece for cold Karoo nights. Not that you’ll be chilly in your tent: when I returned from dinner the wood-burning stove in the corner was crackling away happily.
On my first afternoon I was too late to make the game drive, but ended up the happier for it. With a tin mug of whisky to hand and the plains stretching away, I soaked up the sunset gloaming. Looking north to the dramatic escarpment that tumbles down onto the plains of Camdeboo, a complete immersion in the landscape comes standard.
Though lion and elephant do frequent the area, the camp is unfenced and it feels as if a rhino or cheetah could come wandering out of the thicket at any moment. Plains Camp is still new, but once the wildlife habituate to the addition they no doubt will.
As the sun dips behind the storm clouds gathering in the west — Cape Town’s endless winter following me even to the Camdeboo — a pair of black-backed jackals start up their plaintive wail.
It is a country flooded by sun. Lonely, sparse, wind-swept, treeless on the flats for many miles
— Eve Palmer
An empty, enigmatic landscape
We’re up with the dawn the following morning, hiking boots laced up and long pants donned to guard against the thorn bushes. Unlike the heritage homeliness of Karoo Lodge (which reopens in December after a major overhaul) or the luxury touches of Manor House, the focus at Plains Camp is on walking safaris — taking a slow journey through the landscape. On foot, seeing less is often seeing more.
Chris Swanepoel is just the guide for it. In the shade of a shepherd’s tree he stops to explain the myriad traditional uses of Boscia albitrunca, from roots ground up to brew an imitation of coffee to the leaves used for preserving milk and meat. Around us the morning air is filled with the whistling of eastern clapper larks that rise from the grasslands, beating their wings — seemingly in applause — as they fall back to earth.
“It’s breeding season now, and this display is all about showing who is strongest, who can fly the highest,” explains Swanepoel.
Though we stop to admire bugs and bushes, we’re actually on the hunt for cheetah; two males call this southern corner of the reserve their stamping ground. While the pair are fitted with telemetry collars for security, we’re doing it the old-fashioned way.
While looking for tracks we stop for a sniff of the oily leaves of white-tufted kapokbos, and stomp our boots on curious dolerite rock outcrops. A herd of eland trots up the hillside alongside us, before a Cape hare bursts from its hiding place beneath the Karoo bossies just metres away. We’re not covering much ground, but discovering far more than we would on a vehicle.
But still no cheetah. With the notorious Karoo winds picking up, all sensible animals are hunkered down for the day.
“We’ll try again this afternoon,” says Chris, as we head back to camp.
And we do, later spending 30 magical minutes on foot in the company of a lone female. Behind her, that dramatic escarpment is washed in the tones of evening light.
“It is a country flooded by sun,” wrote Eve Palmer in The Plains of Camdeboo, her evocative history of the region. “Lonely, sparse, wind-swept, treeless on the flats for many miles.”
It is all that, and more. It’s a landscape as empty as it is enigmatic, captivating in its stark lines and unforgiving beauty. And while you may forgo a few luxuries experiencing it under canvas at Plains Camp, there is surely no better way to discover the plains of Camdeboo.
* The writer was a guest at Ecca Lodge and Plains Camp
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