The best hotels in South Africa

The Lapalala Wilderness is three hours’ drive north of Johannesburg – so within easy access of South Africa’s biggest city – yet it feels a world away. Since a pair of local conservationists started to buy hunting concessions and farms in the 1980s to create a sanctuary for endangered animals, the private nature reserve has grown to over 50,000 hectares, characterised by miles of rolling forested hills, red sandstone cliffs and grassy plains. Within this vast area, though, are only a handful of places to stay: just two private homes (for its main investors) and two lodges for visitors: Noka, a luxury 12-bed tented safari camp atop a cliff, which opened in 2019, and Melote House, which hosted its first guests in January 2024. The USPs of the eight-bedroomed house are not only that it’s in a malaria-free zone – but that it’s private.

Take it over (for a minimum of three nights) and you’re pretty unlikely to see another guest, whether you’re on game drives up steep hills and across golden plains in open-sided, comfortably kitted-out safari vehicles, swimming in fast-moving rivers, floating gently on a boat watching birds, or fishing at sunset on a dam. Because the house comes with two private guides and vehicles, the timetable can be set by guests, who can go out when they want for as long as they want, before returning to luxuriate in the contemporary bush house: to swim or sip cocktails in its two pools, exercise in the open-air, hilltop gym and yoga deck, have massages in the little spa, browse the gift shop or just hang out by the two pools. Because the house is surrounded, at the bottom of the hill, by an electric fence, the Big Five are unlikely to get into the bush property, making it a great place for parties and family gatherings. Lisa Grainger