World-renowned for exceptional wilderness experiences that drive exemplary sustainability initiatives, ecotourism maestros andBeyond also wrap their guests in supreme comfort and sublime design. Exhibit A – South Africa’s elegantly Zulu-Zen safari sanctum Phinda Forest Lodge.
From the moment we arrived in Phinda Private Game Reserve, the speed with which spectacular wildlife teemed into view seemed almost indecent. Bheki, the driver who picked us up from the ten-seater Cessna turboprop that had flown us from Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport, hadn’t even cleared the grass airstrip before we saw a family of zebras and a herd of wildebeest. Next, a small swarm of Bambi-cute impalas barrelled out of our way. “The McDonald’s of the bush”, chuckled Bheki, pointing out the M-shaped black markings on their russet haunches, and status as a popular menu staple for the local lion population.
On our first game drive that afternoon, within 15 minutes of Phinda Forest Lodge, we parked 20m away from a clan of hyenas sheltering from the afternoon sun at their tree-shaded den, among them a mother suckling her cub, who maintained unbroken eye contact with us for two full minutes. Soon afterwards, we locked eyes with a huge lioness on the edge of a grassy savannah plain, who was, with a dozen or so pride-mates, panting off the digestion of a recent kill evident from their drum-tight bellies.
Prolific wildlife sightings are a hallmark of a safari with andBeyond, the luxury ecotourism specialist whose journey began in 1991 at Phinda, and which today operates 28 lodges and camps across three continents, plus one expedition yacht. Its safari locations are chosen for their relative exclusivity, extensive traversing rights, and their guides and trackers are trained, including at their own facility here in Phinda, to the highest standards. The ten-seater Toyota Land Cruisers never take more than six guests for comfort’s sake, and guides are highly skilled in negotiating itineraries that best balance the interests of their passengers – and up-to-the-minute wildlife intel shared between guides over the radio – on a drive-by-drive basis, be those birding (Phinda is home to 400-plus species), trees and plants, habitats or seeking out game’s famed ‘Big Five’ beasts.
Another andBeyond hallmark is seriously stylish, and expertly understated contemporary luxury. The first of eight safari accommodations the brand now offers across South Africa, the 2023-renovated Phinda Forest Lodge is a trailblazer in eco-friendly design and construction, and sustainable management. Not one tree was cut down or damaged to build the lodge, whose handsome timber hub buildings and 16 glass-walled bungalow suites blend into pristine, 100-million-year-old sand forest.
Generously spaced out for privacy, the roomy suites, their interiors an elegant, muted, Zulu-Zen hybrid, beam ancient forest-floor views to guests’ beds and free-standing bathtubs, and, given the decision not to fence the property to minimise impact, often receive animal visitors (guests are escorted by security staff back to their rooms after dark). We returned from lunch one day to find an insanely pretty female nyala antelope by our veranda, and, just three metres apart, we gazed into each other’s eyes for two full minutes while with her rear hoof she gave her ear a languid scratch that looked almost coquettish, then wandered slowly off among the trees.
The bar, restaurant and lounge/gallery are both coolly understated and fiercely chic, their subtle aesthetics threaded through with references to local art and crafts, and the unfussy international menus reflect an ethos of thoughtful consumption, while skilfully showcasing top-quality produce and an impressive wine selection. After one afternoon drive, we were ushered into the site’s candelit ‘boma’, a stylish, modern interpretation of the namesake enclosure traditional in African villages, for a lavish barbecue dinner beneath stars. After another, our guide Thulani took a detour to take us to a surprise bush banquet for all the lodge’s guests set up in the middle of the forest. Breakfast too is often relocated, unannounced, to some beautiful wilderness location, and is one more example of the kind of imaginative, extra-mile style of modern hospitality that’s at the heart of the andBeyond brand.
Phinda was also the place where andBeyond launched its pioneering programme of conservation and community-uplift projects, a key part of its trailblazing tourism business model. Typically, Thulani comes from a nearby community, and he told us he only became the excellent guide he is today because his potential was spotted by a manager while working on Phinda’s plant encroachment projects, and invited to enrol at andBeyond’s ranger training school. Most by far of the 300-odd highly skilled staff who service Phinda’s lodges are locally recruited and trained – but andBeyond’s committed efforts to benefit local communities reach way further, through the worldwide non-profit organisation it established called Wild Impact. During our stay, we visited Mdudla Primary School just outside the reserve, where Wild Impact built a new classroom block, installed electricity and established a climate-resilient vegetable garden which helps feed the students. Another transformative local project is Mduku Clinic, a general health and maternity centre which offers daily healthcare, where before the nearest clinic was 17km away, and the nearest hospital 60km.
But conservation was andBeyond’s founders’ first guiding objective, and the greatest testament to Phinda’s success is the rude health of the conservancy’s animal populations, most of which had to be grown from zero. In its first year, Phinda became the first private reserve to reintroduce elephants. Cheetah, whose global wild adult numbers of around 6,500 make them IUCN-classified as ‘vulnerable’, were also successfully reintroduced here, and today 25 percent of all wild cheetahs either live or are from here. Both white and black rhinos have also thrived in the region after relocation, and pioneering reintroduction methods, which successfully mixed animals from different prides in Phinda’s early days, have created one of South Africa’s most genetically diverse lion populations. andBeyond guests can even take part in certain conservation activities, such as darting a black rhino for vets’ testing, changing the research collar on an anesthetised wild elephant or conducting health checks on an endangered and highly rare pangolin, the world’s most trafficked mammal.
We wondered, on our last Phinda Forest Lodge game drive, how many generations of lions there had been since those first reintroduced and the pride we found a second time, napping off another heavy feed, while two energetic young males play-fought on a river bank. So engrossed were we in their behaviours that Thulani had to tap our shoulders to alert us to his latest sighting. We turned to see a massive bull elephant, ebony-black with the sun behind him and with two red-billed oxpeckers deticking his huge ear, strolling regally across the savannah.
Photography courtesy of andBeyond
Perfect for
The Adventurer
Fly into
JNB, then MQP and Phinda Private Game Reserve Airstrip
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While you’re OutThere
As a Phinda guest, you’re welcome to take a close-up look at some of the inspiring environmental impacts andBeyond and partners are cultivating in this beautiful reserve. Feel the breath of a sedated wild rhino as part of a conservation team on a dehorning mission, or help monitor Phinda’s population of super-endangered pangolins, the world’s most trafficked mammal, restored to this area after decades of local extinction – the first such reintroduction on the planet.
