UK Edition
Incredible safari lodges, a private island resort and geodesic domes: Tanzania's new luxuries uncovered
It’s early morning, and as rays of sun light up Tanzania’s northern plains, a tiny Hadzabe tribeswoman draped in yellow cloth and an antelope-hide cloak beckons me towards a tree. Oozing from a deep gash is thick golden liquid that she greedily spoons into her mouth with bark, before handing me a stick so I can do the same. Feeling a bit like Pooh Bear , I twizzle it, then savour the explosion of intense floral flavours swirling around my palate.
I’ve never sampled wild honey before – straight from the hive, with tiny (thankfully stingless) bees buzzing around – but it’s a normal part of the diet of the hunter-gatherer Hadzabe people, who have lived off this land for centuries. Today, there are only about 1,000 of the diminutive tribe left in Africa, some settled around nearby Lake Eyasi, others in a village within the Mwiba Wildlife Reserve , where I am staying.
Historically, the Hadzabe have been badly treated: hounded off land by pastoralists and conservationists unsympathetic to their nomadic, hand-to-mouth lifestyle. At Mwiba, they’ve been offered an alternative way of making a living: sharing bush skills with tourists who haven’t a clue how to survive in the wild.
Over two hours, protected from the elephant and buffalo crashing in the undergrowth by an armed ranger, I discover how to find water (look out for a melon-plant leaf, then dig), cure a stomach ache (boil the roots of the wild pear), thicken vegetable soup (add crushed marula nuts), make a bow and arrow, and even light a fire using an old bird’s nest and two sticks. On my return to Mwiba Lodge for breakfast, I feel like I’ve entered another universe.
But then, Mwiba is a different world. The 51,000-acre reserve has been leased to American hunter-turned-conservationist Dan Friedkin , whose family fund has invested over £200 million to protect more than 6.1 million acres around Tanzania from development and poachers. By staying here, each of the 16 guests paying £1,250 a night will fund schools, clinics, anti-poaching patrols and remote communities such as the Hadzabe. Friedkin’s project is similar to that operated by Paul Tudor Jones in the Grumeti Reserves further north, but 10 times bigger.
The reserve is every bit as beautiful as Grumeti and is wedged between the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, the Serengeti National Park and the Great Rift Valley, within driving distance of all three World Heritage Sites. It’s rich game country. Between January and April, the migration drifts on to plains just two hours away, and in the dry season buffalo, elephant, giraffe and zebra come to drink in its springs. By night, leopard hunt on the granite kopjes and by day the skies are aflutter with birds: lurid sunbirds flitting between flowers, massive augur buzzards soaring on the thermals, rare grey-crested helmet shrikes darting between bushes.
The 10-suite lodge, built amid the giant granite boulders of a kopje, is equally impressive. Friedkin’s wife Debra decorated Mwiba with the help of acclaimed South African architect Lisa Rorich, and it’s pitch-perfect, from its organic raw materials (soaring dry-stone walls, sculptural Danish-style wooden furniture, beaten-copper lamps) and comforts (egg-shaped baths with bush views; air-conditioned beds; outdoor showers) to its Ottolenghi -style meals and impressive wines.
The billionaire owners clearly understand their market: big spenders such as George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin who want to see Africa in significant comfort while contributing towards conservation. As well as guided walks, private game drives, surprise picnics and sundowners elegantly set out on hilltops, there are such first-world extravagances as a Technogym, a new Africology spa, a cellar with fine wines and champagne, and an infinity pool constructed on a cliff-edge – all powered by the biggest private solar plant in the country. As one American guest succinctly puts it: “When Friedkin does something, he does it so right – in every way.”
Of all the countries in Africa, Tanzania is one of the most popular with tourists – in large part because of its diversity. It is enormous, from the peak of its highest mountain (Kilimanjaro) to the depths of Africa’s deepest lake (Tanganyika) , from the wilds of its biggest park (Selous) to the floor of the world’s biggest unbroken caldera – which I visit, to stay at the country’s newest camp, The Highlands.
The Ngorongoro Crater is one of Africa’s most photographed spots: a volcanic caldera covering more than 100sq miles . Thousands of creatures roam here, from packs of hyena and prides of lion to pairs of endangered rhino. Some half a million tourists visit a year, nearly all of whom enter from the park’s southerly gate.
The Highlands changes that – not only because it is the first semi-permanent camp within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, but the first camp anywhere near the northerly Lemala Gate. While the hordes are log-jammed at the main gate in the morning, we are enjoying a leisurely descent from the northerly Crater Highlands without another car in sight.
Asilia, the safari company that owns The Highlands, is known for its innovative approach to safaris, whether that’s creating high-end mobile circuits or constructing lodges in remote places. The company’s latest camp is unlike any other in Africa, each of its tents a geodesic dome – or giant canvas and Perspex bubble – that is cooled by a solar-powered fan in summer and warmed by a log stove in winter.
That’s the theory, anyway. In June, the start of winter, I need every fake-fur throw and heather-coloured blanket on my bed to stay warm as the clouds swirl around. Even in Africa, at almost 9,000ft temperatures drop to near zero, hence the après-ski-like atmosphere round the fire in the cosy wood-panelled bar at night, and the delight with which I welcome the delivery of steaming morning tea by a smiling askari – wearing, to my amazement, open sandals.
I shouldn’t be surprised, really. The Maasai have traversed these landscapes for generations with their cattle and are well adapted to the climate and thin mountain air. Hiking narrow, steep paths into volcanic craters with them is like entering a Jurassic film-set, fringed with a tangle of gnarled old figs and tropical olives, liana ropes and pale-green lichen. As well as plains teeming with game, we come upon valleys thick with orchids, waterfalls that tumble hundreds of feet, a soda lake in Mount Empakai inhabited by lurid-pink flamingos, beaches scattered with ancient hominid tools.
A nearby Maasai village is holding a circumcision ceremony, and Baracka, my guide, obtains the chief’s permission for me to attend (thankfully, just the celebrations). For a couple of hours, I’m received into the tribe: to witness hundreds of heavily beaded, spear-brandishing warriors streaming over the hills into the village boma, to dance with ululating women who place beads from their necks around mine, to sip a home-made brew with the chief’s fifth wife in her hut. The village has never had a white visitor before, the chief tells me through a translator, but now that several of his tribe have started to work at The Highlands, I am welcome.
That night, lying beneath a feather duvet back at camp, after a hot shower and a hearty supper, there isn’t a place I’d rather be. I can see the silver wash of the Milky Way above, can hear a hyena whooping, and can still envisage the sights and sounds of hundreds of Maasai drumming and dancing. Two hot-water bottles at my feet probably help raise endorphin levels, too...
One of the greatest thrills of travelling by tiny plane through Tanzania (a country the size of France, Germany and Switzerland combined ) is that you can see how diverse the country is. Flitting from its newest camp in the north to a billionaire’s private island in the south, I soar above salt lakes surrounded by desert; patchwork fields fringing forests; fishermen in dhows casting nets among coastal mangroves; the fast-growing Dar es Salaam choked with traffic. And, as we soar south, dozens of tiny Indian Ocean islands – dots of cream surrounded by a sea of pale periwinkle, violent cerulean, deep cobalt – before landing between forests of coconut palms at Mafia.
The island, which has been a trading post for the past 2,500 years, feels a bit like Zanzibar before the advent of mass tourism. As my taxi trundles north along the potholed sand road to a little cove at which I’m met by a speedboat, I pass idyllic coconut plantations, emerald rice paddies, palm-thatched huts surrounded by flower-filled gardens.
Half an hour later, over 10 miles of choppy seas, I reach my final destination: Thanda Island, the retreat of Swedish IT billionaire Dan Olofsson and his wife Christin . The couple found the island in 2006 when searching for a beach home to twin with their Thanda Private Game Reserve in South Africa . Ten (very expensive, bureaucratic) years later, in June, they opened the eight-hectare private island for hire.
To build a luxury beach house with tennis court, solar-farm and desalination plant on a remote island has taken not only £5 million but the sweat of hundreds of men. Constructed from whitewashed wood and inspired by Jackie Kennedy’s Hyannis Port retreat, the five-bedroom house feels part South African mansion, part Swedish summerhouse. Alongside elegant white and blue Scandinavian-style living spaces, housing a Steinway piano and floor-to-ceiling tropical fish-tank, wide verandas lead to a long glass-walled pool, created so the owner could enjoy views of the beach while swimming underwater. There’s a boathouse, stocked with toys from paddleboards to jet-skis, a dive-boat, and two thatched beach bandas for guests who fancy accommodation that’s more relaxed. And everywhere you look there’s somewhere to lie and soak in the Indian Ocean views: loungers around the pool, rattan “cocoons” on the beach, giant beanbags under whirring fans.
That is, if you find time to lie about. Not far away is the largest protected marine area in the Indian Ocean , teeming with sea-life. Half an hour away lie recently discovered ruins, which local archaeologists believe are possibly Roman. There is a catamaran, a Celestron telescope for stargazing, and helicopter excursions to boatyards on Mafia, the ancient remains of Kilwa, remote sandbanks for picnics. Plus, right on the beach, are rocks bristling with oysters.
Not that additional food is needed. Thanda’s chef is the hugely talented Melissa Macdonald, 26, from Botswana, whose inventive cuisine ranges from mango and shrimp salad to dense orange-and-chocolate soufflé. When, after another sensational meal, I suggest that she sets up a restaurant in London, she looks askance. “Why would I do that when I live on the most beautiful island in Africa?” she says, dashing off to whisk up passion-fruit macarons for tea. I can see her point. If I could afford it, I wouldn’t leave Thanda, either.
Natural World Safaris (01273 691 642) can organise a 10-day luxury safari from £10,880 per person sharing, based on eight adults sharing. The price includes Kenya Airways international and internal flights, transfers, and three nights each at Mwiba Lodge, The Highlands and exclusive use of Thanda Island with all meals, house drinks and activities.