The Vuyani Safari Lodge is undoubtedly one of the most exclusive safari lodges in South Africa in one specific, but pivotal, way.
With its 5 suites the lodge can only accomodate up to 10 guests at most at any point in time, and, as it is the only safari lodge on the entire reserve, and the only one with access to quasi the entire 36,000 acre Blue Canyon Conservancy, it offers a kind of safari exclusivity that true safari connoissuers are craving for.
True, true, the suites at the Vuyani Safari Lodge are amongst the most pleasant and well appointed in the Greater Kruger Park area, and the design of the bathrooms is one of the most outstanding for any safari lodge in South Africa, and, yes, also true, the creative quality of the meals is yet another big plus, but what makes this lodge truly unique is the fact that one gets a guaranteed and genuinely intimate and up-close to wildlife safari experience.
With only one game driver on an estate of 36,000 acres it sometimes takes a day or two to find a specific animal, but once it is tracked and found, our guests can stay and observe it for hours if this is desired. No other game driver will turn up. Noone will disturb the sighting in any way.
That sort of experience is truly rare, if not impossible, on any reserve or nature park in South Africa, or wider Africa for that matter.
Whether you are in the Amoseli Park, the Masai Mara, the Kruger Park, or any other reserve, private or public, you as a guest can rest assured that if you have found a rare animal that someone will radio in other game drivers and that they will turn up within 15 minutes at the most, and that you will have to move off as a consequence.
Sometimes this practice is well hidden of course. The trackers and guides will communicate in a non-English language so that the guests cannot understand what they are organising, but more often than not they are letting each other know when they are near, so that your guide can convince you that it is worth continuing rather than staying at a certain sighting, in order to avoid guests seeing another game driver arrive. That is an elegant manner of managing guests and their experience, but still, it reduces the chances and freedom of the entire safari experience.
There are obvious caveats to the way we run things here at the Vuyani Safari Lodge, such as the fact that our rangers cannot rely on other ranger’s information to find animals, but most of our guests stay over 5 nights to compensate for this fact.
For those guests that are tired of the “Formula1”-type safaris and of being quickly showed all Big5 as if that is all that matters, as if one was in a zoo, we are a real, and very rare, alternative.
If one takes enough time. and with the right passion for nature, one will experience nature here up close, in a quiet and serene environnment as it has become very seldom these days in Africa unfortunately.
For more information on our reserve, and our wildlife, please click here: http://www.vuyanilodge.com/reserve
