Makalali means a place for travellers to rest, and owner Charles Smith and architect Silvio Rech have worked together to create a place where people can relax and enjoy the tranquillity of the African bush, while at the same time enjoying the game experience.
The 12 camps are situated on the banks of the Makhutswi River, and before long you are back in touch with the nature that is all around us in Africa yet so often completely forgotten in our busy lives. It's hard to believe that all this space is only four hours away from the teeming streets of Johannesburg.
The architecture of the camps has won several design awards, and a stroll around will explain why. The basis of the design was for the buildings to look both contemporary and traditional, and completely organic, as if they had grown out of the ground like an anthill. As far as possible, rooms have been built around trees to incorporate things from nature that already existed on the site.
What transports the buildings into a realm of their own is, as for everything else in Makalali, the attention to detail. Every door handle, light switch and corner of the room has been given some thought - even the spare roll of toilet paper has a little bow tied around it in twine.
At Christmas time; there's a little extra magic at Makalili. twinkling lights have a special radiance against the nighttime darkness of the bush and are complime
nted by the starriest skies you'll ever see.
The tree glitters and the table groans with food. The head chef at Makalali is American Geoffrey Murray, who cooks'world food', which he describes as retaining the ethnicity of food while heightening the local flavours. He has immersed himself in the flavours of Africa as can be seen from the Christmas menu: glazed sweet potato and pumpkin with pumpkin seeds, Mozambican prawn curry, roast lamb with coffee and cocoa ... and so on, every dish a mouthwatering success.
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