Lalibela Wildlife Reserve

Key Takeaways:

• Six lodges, 10,500 hectares, nothing fenced inside it. Grassland, thicket and wooded valleys under rugged cliffs, with Big Five plus cheetah, hyena, jackal, caracal, giraffe, zebra and hippo.

• Match the lodge to the youngest person in your party. Mark's Camp takes all ages, Lentaba starts at 12, and Inzolo, Tree Tops and Kichaka take 16 and over.

• Mills Manor comes as a whole house. Exclusive-use only, minimum six adults, minimum two nights.

• Allow an hour from Gqeberha. Reception sits 90 km from the airport.

• Budget from R11 500 per person sharing per night, covering accommodation, all meals, drinks excluding premium wines and spirits, and two open-vehicle safaris a night.

• Nobody in your party needs prophylaxis. The Eastern Cape is a malaria-free region.

Lalibela at a Glance

Game Drives and the Big Five

Lion, elephant, rhino, buffalo and leopard are all present. Alongside them are cheetah, hyena, jackal and caracal, with giraffe and zebra among the plains game, and hippo as well.

There is nothing between you and the outside on these vehicles. No windows, no barriers, no set routes, and your guide is allowed to leave the track for a Big Five sighting, for cheetah and for anything else out of the ordinary. That means a sighting spotted standing way out in the grass is one you can actually get to (and potentially grab a great picture of).

The animals have 10,500 hectares to explore, with nothing dividing the interior and no public road crossing it.

Conservation: 4,000 Hectares Recovered from Invasive Wattle

Some of the grassland at Lalibela that the animals are standing on is recent work, and that is our favourite thing about this reserve. Four thousand hectares of black wattle has come off this reserve, changing the landscape and the ecosystem for the better.

Black wattle is an Australian tree that holds a full green canopy all year and drinks accordingly, and where it takes hold it replaces grassland with dense stands, causing native biodiversity to fall away underneath them.

The process of removing black wattle is about 80% finished. The trees are cut, dried and burnt. The ash, which is full of the nutrients, is then worked back into the soil. Today, instead of large tracks of this invasive tree species, the reserve has transformed back into savanna grassland, which is one of the biomes with the highest wildlife carrying capacity.

Read more about sustainability at Lalibela here.

Mark's Camp is built for noise—the joyful kind, that is. It sits low in a wide valley with water in front of it, green reed and grass at the edge and a thicket-covered slope rising behind, and space for the kids to run around. It is discreetly fenced, which is what keeps you from constantly watching the perimeter and start watching the water instead. Four of its eight rooms are family units with partitioned sleeping areas, so children sleep behind a wall. Two swimming pools for the middle of the day, a large open fireplace for the end of it.

The reason to take a luxury villa at Lentaba Lodge is the ball-and-claw bath, and specifically what is on the other side of the window while you are in it: a slope of pale grass with dark clumps of bush standing in it, running down and up again to the hill opposite. A long hot bath at the end of an afternoon in an open vehicle is a slightly old-fashioned pleasure (the ten villas split evenly between classic and luxury, and the bath is what the luxury ones add). They stand in an indigenous garden, thatch over stone, each with its own deck. Down at the main lodge the waterhole is lit in the evening, so the viewing does not stop when the drive does.

Four suites is the whole of Inzolo Lodge, which makes four couples a full house. It stands in a secluded valley above an active waterhole, with rugged cliffs on one side and the valley below it thick with vegetation all the way down, and every room has its own viewing deck, so the waterhole belongs to you from the moment you put the bag down. The lounge and dining area open onto the terrace.

At Tree Tops Safari Lodge, five canvas suites stand on platforms inside natural indigenous forest, linked by walkways and decks, so you move around the camp at canopy height. Canvas walls mean you hear what is outside (they are double-walled and insulated, so hearing it is all you do). The floors are polished teak, the roofs are thatch, and the dining deck looks over a waterhole in the forest below. Knysna Turaco is one of the birds here, and a turaco is a bird of mature evergreen forest rather than of open bushveld, which tells you exactly what you'll find around this camp.

Mills Manor comes as a whole house. It is a refurbished Edwardian mansion on a hill with the valley falling away below it, five bedrooms under high ceilings, wide wrap-around verandas, and stack doors that turn a bedroom into a veranda when you want one. Because it goes on an exclusive-use basis only, minimum six adults, the dining room, the sun deck, the swimming pool and the big outdoor fire pit belong to your party for as long as you are there. The rate carries a private chef, a private vehicle and a dedicated safari guide, so the vehicle that goes out is yours.

Rates and minimum ages are correct for 2027. All rates are per person sharing, per night, including 15% VAT, all-inclusive (accommodation, all meals, drinks excluding premium wines and spirits, two open-vehicle safaris per night).  On top of the rate: A conservation levy is charged per person per night: R250 for adults (15 and over) and R125 for children aged 2 to 14.

A day at Lalibela Wildlife Reserve involves starting the day with a game drive before coming back from the morning safari sometime before lunch, with the rest of the day yours until the afternoon vehicle goes out again. Every lodge has its own pool and its own kitchen, and the rate covers all your meals and drinks (excluding premium wines and spirits), so brunch after a morning drive tends to stretch.

The lodge chefs work with locally sourced ingredients and cook across both traditional South African and international lines, and if you are staying at Tree Tops the meal happens on a lantern-lit deck above the forest. At Mills Manor your private chef builds the menu around whatever your group wants.

Kichaka Lodge guests also have access to the spa's sauna and steam room, and we would point couples toward the Africology Devotion Journey, a 90-minute treatment for two.

If you would rather move than sit, easy guided walks through the reserve's non-Big Five area are open to all ages and bookable on arrival (at additional cost). They are quieter than the vehicle safaris and good for birding and for smaller children who want to feel the bush underfoot.

The great thing about Lalibela Wildlife Reserve is that you can be on a game vehicle enjoying nature the very same day you landed in Gqeberha. The main reception is 90 km from the city, roughly an hour on a road that a standard rental car handles perfectly well.

From there, the car is parked in a secure bay and a reserve vehicle will take you the rest of the way. (Kichaka Lodge guests check in at their own dedicated reception about fifteen minutes further on, or 105 km out from Gqeberha.)

Which Lalibela Lodge is for You?

Tell us who is travelling, the age of the youngest, and roughly when. We will come back with the lodge at Lalibela Wildlife Reserve that fits, and what it costs in your travel year.