Reviews of The Motse at Tswalu

"The trip begins and ends (if you’re coming via Johannesburg) with a delightful stop at a private lounge located on the airport campus, with apparently unlimited food and drinks. If your connecting flight is a few hours away, this is a nice place to hang out while you’re waiting. The plane into Tswalu (journey time 80 minutes) is a sort of executive light aircraft, a distinct cut above the usual noisy and cramped planes that fly you around the bush.

The lodge is lovely, with huge air-conditioned bedrooms that include outdoor and indoor showers, a large bath, a fully-stocked bar, tea, coffee, milk, biscuits and snacks, and a terrace which animals frequently pass. The staff are all charming and helpful. The food is excellent, and the dining times are completely open - you dine whenever you want, and dining is at your own private table. There’s a water-hole visible from the dining terrace, and it’s visited almost constantly by roan, kudu, sable, wildebeest. Your trip includes an evening at the gourmet restaurant, Klein Jan, which is a memorable experience and great fun (even if the food is a little over-hyped).

The park itself (in February, their summer) is surprisingly green and lush, and is exceptionally beautiful. You have your own vehicle, and a dedicated guide and an expert tracker (in our case, an outstanding duo of Khali and Sips). In the summer, game drives go out at 6.00 am for about 5 hours, then back out at 5.00 pm for a 7.00 pm sundowner, and what is effectively a night drive back to the lodge.

The park is fenced, and the animal population managed, so this is not quite an ‘authentic’ wildlife experience. Lions and cheetahs are kept separate, for example, to improve the prospects for the latter, and animals are periodically moved around, introduced, sold off, and so on. There are artificial water-holes to help with periods of drought. There is a meerkat colony that is habituated to humans, so you can literally walk amongst them. None of this really detracts from the experience, however, as the park is vast, and there is a real spirit of wilderness about the place. It’s also the case that you don’t encounter a rhino around every corner: on the contrary, the trackers have to work hard to find the star game for you.

Animals are ‘sparse’, not in the sense that you don’t see much, but that there are no large herds as in the Serengeti, for instance. But it’s almost guaranteed to see roan, oryx, wildebeest and giraffe on every game drive, frequent sable, and there is a pleasing variety of animals - we saw meerkats, cape fox, bat-eared fox, cape hare, scrub hare, spring hare, Cape Cobra, warthogs, baboons, mongoose, porcupine, chameleons, wild cat, and many nice birds. There is also a good range of antelope, including those already mentioned and also eland, hartebeest, springbok, steenbok. There is one small herd of male buffalos, and a few zebra. Unfortunately, there are no elephants. There is no river, so no crocodiles or hippos.

For the big animals, we went out on specific searches and had a series of exciting - and always successful - tracking adventures: white rhino, black rhino, black-maned lion, cheetah and wild dogs (the pack, decimated by canine distemper, is down to just 3, but they’re still great to see and follow). The skill of the trackers is quite breathtaking.

The blurb promises aardvark and pangolin, but this is misleading. These are both much more likely to be encountered in winter rather than summer, and the pangolin-tracking research project has now finished, so your chances of seeing one may not be that great.

The food on the game drives could be improved: the camp offers a large buffet spread at 5.30 am, when it’s quite hard to think about food at all, and then a snack on the game drive. The other way around would be much better. The sundowner snacks are a bit inadequate." See all these reviews: 5n in South Africa

"The Oppenheimers have created a very special place. Every element is outstanding and made our whole experience unforgettable.

This is probably not for a first time safari goer, as the animals are not as easy to find as in some other parts of Africa but for the aficionados, tracking and then ,seeing animals is the way it should be. Also, the way things are organised so that vehicles do not go to the same areas and if there is an amazing sighting only two vehicles can view at the same time.

We stayed for seven nights and had not covered a fraction of the area." See all these reviews: 7n in South Africa