Pezula Resort Hotel & Spa, which features on the front page of my website Tailor Made South Africa Travel has won the travel industry’s equivalent to the Oscars by taking “Africa’s Leading Spa Resort” and “South Africa’s Leading Spa Resort” titles.

No small feat with over 165,000 travel agencies and professionals in over 140 countries worldwide voting for their leading travel destinations, airlines, hotels and companies around the world.

What makes it even more remarkable is that Pezula first opened it’s doors in February 2005 and has gone on to win a host of accolades such as Robb Report’s one of the World’s 100 Best Places to Stay in 2006, plus other highly prestigious awards from the world’s luxury travel media.

Situated on the edge of the wonderfully pretty Garden Route town of Knysna, it lies within the Pezula Resort, which rambles over the Noetzie Headland, down to the breathtakingly, secluded beach of Noetzie itself, which is wholely worth a visit in its own right, but I’ll tell you more about Noetzie another time.

The golf complex winds its way across the headland with incredible views of the Indian Ocean on one side and the Knysna Heads and Lagoon on the other. The “Field of Dreams” sports complex along with a private residential estate and the hotel and spa complex is tucked into the ancient indigenous forests yet maximises the breaktaking views across the golf course.

Having spotted that Pezula had won these awards, I was reminded that Roger Federer spends time here.

Needless to say that in a family with very strong tennis credentials and a complete love of all things South African, this ranks highly on our list of places to visit!

In fact, Roger’s mother is South African and Roger himself supports, through his Foundation the superb project situated in the Eastern Cape, IMBEWU, helping disadvantaged children achieve a better life for themselves.

Take a look at the photo gallery and see the wonderful display of sheer enjoyment, as they play tennis and other sports on the sports complex that Roger has taken an active part in realising.

   Â

Earlier this year I felt I needed to develope my website to better interact with you, my valued readers. I called upon Howell Burnell, a good friend who writes some of the best web copy around. I chose Howell for a number of reasons, but amongst them was that he has a love of Africa which shone through in our discussions and was just the thing I wanted to bring out in my website. South Africa is my passion and I wanted that to be reflected in the pages.

Howell coined the following paragraph which is on the home page of Tailor Made South Africa Travel, and I loved it immediately as it sums up the South Africa I have grown to love.

There’s a practice in South Africa called Ubuntu. It means: We are each other. It suggests kindness and humanity.

I like to express Ubuntu through service. Your journey is special and I’m going to treat it that way. In fact, I’ll personally attend to every detail.

Here’s why. With over 20 years of South Africa travel experience – and a lifelong background in service and hospitality – I’ve learned the value of sharing what I love with others.

And I want to share South Africa with you…

Imagine my suprise and delight when Bill Clinton, ex-president of the USA spoke of Ubuntu to the British Labour party last week. Not sure that his Ubuntu was quite what I had in mind, but rather prefer what Archbishop Desmond Tutu has to say on the matter, that being in his book ‘No Future Without Forgiveness’, says: “Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language… It is to say, ‘My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in what is yours.”

No doubt Bill Clinton clearly rose to his theme in delivering his speech. I found that some of the comments left on the page were also rather interesting. Take a look yourself and decide which type of Ubuntu you want to get into!

I am sure the purists amongst us will tell you that you have to suffer the inconveniences of malaria tablets to really experience the best of South African safaris, with traditional venues being Mpumalanga and Sabi Sands regions simply because of the vast diversity in species available to view, but today sees an emerging alternative which can combine visits to Cape Town and the Garden Route along with a luxury safari in a non-malaria region in the Eastern Cape, without the hassle of long distance travel to get to the north of the country.

Shamwari Game Reserve has long been a prestigious, award winning destination, but others are now springing up out of the ‘empty’ green hills between Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape. Original European settlers pushing their way north and east, upsetting the Xhosa locals ‘en route’ and sparking bloody confrontations deemed this to be ‘frontier country’ and new waves of settlers are discovering game viewing and five-star accommodation more to their liking than fighting the locals!

Pumba Game Reserve is one such safari destination. Take a look at the luxury bedrooms! Click on the photos to get a clearer idea of the size of them. Aren’t they fabulous? I would imagine it’s hard to tear yourself away to go and look at the animals on cold mornings or evenings, but every luxury is taken care of and beanies, scarves and blankets are provided on your drive, along with binoculars, as a matter of course.

To get more of a hands-on feel for what it would be like to stay at Pumba and indeed the chance to win a luxury weekend stay, take a look at iafrica’s lucky reporter whose stay evidently fitted the bill!

Take a look at our Game Lodges to find more ideas on safaris in the north of the country, but please do contact us if you would like more information on other South Africa safari regions.