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Condé Nast Traveler today announced the results of its annual Readers’ Choice Awards. Samara Karoo Reserve, near Graaff-Reinet in the Eastern Cape’s Great Karoo region and home to the Big Five, over 60 mammal species and 225 bird species, was recognised in the Top 15 Resorts in South Africa. The Readers’ Choice Awards, with their … Continued
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A great deal of love and hard work is going into ensuring the redesign retains the lodge’s quintessential Karoo character while embracing a modern approach to safari living. Upon re-opening on 15 December 2023, Karoo Lodge will comprise 8 Karoo Suites and 2 Karoo Family Suites. Rates start at R11,000 pppns all-inclusive. All suites will … Continued
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A lion roar is not to be confused with the petulant snarl that comes before a Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer film. The real thing sounds like a god vomiting up the earth. It fills the bush from one horizon to the other and it fills the soul of listening humans with awe and terror. I was back on … Continued
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My great and alas late friend John Burton, the maverick genius of conservation, was a great one for the underdog. He always maintained that elephant shrews were more interesting than elephants. I never asked him, but I have no doubt whatsoever that he believed zorillas are more interesting than gorillas. The zorilla or striped polecat … Continued
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I saw an aardvark near the foot of Aasvogelberg: it was a night of rejoicing, and not just because of those glorious double-As. I was in Samara and the fact that I saw not one but two aardvarks says a great deal about the land I was visiting. Aasvogelberg, by the way, is the mountain … Continued
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Dusk was falling. I had almost completed a new personal best: the 13-hour game-drive. But what else could we do? We had commuted across Samara from one wonder to the next, all the time savouring a single miracle: this was a land that had, more or less literally, been farmed to death, and was now … Continued
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Eagle Rock looks out over the Plains of Camdeboo in the great Karoo north of Cape Town. I surveyed this apparently endless stretch of land, keeping a cautious few paces from the edge, and thought about loss. And what follows. There was a time not long past when this rock provided one of the greatest … Continued
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Enlightenment must be like this… the sudden enlightenment of the Zen student who perceives infinity in an instant of time and is forever richer. I had arrived at Samara, in the Karoo in South Africa, the previous day. I knew the Tompkins family had loved and cherished the place for a quarter of a century … Continued
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Few trees have such a fitting name as does the Shepherd Tree. Both the Latin species name Boscia albitrunca and the Afrikaans name Witgatboom refer to the conspicuous white trunk. The English name also aptly describes this tree whose green canopy often stands out in the arid environments in which it thrives. The particular subspecies … Continued
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Samara Private Game Reserve near Graaff-Reinet in the Eastern Cape’s Great Karoo region is honouring and celebrating this unique, remarkable and soulful landscape of infinite horizons by changing its name to Samara Karoo Reserve. Since time immemorial the Karoo – a landscape of space, stars and silence – has held a special place in the … Continued
