Wildehondekloof Game Lodge

There is South Africa with Table Mountain, with wine tasting, the Big 5, with game lodges - all you get as you would expect from Internet and travel books.... and there is Wildehondekloof! Wildehondekloof requires to take a gravel road detour north into semi-wilderness from the paved road connecting Calitzdorp with Oudtshoorn. Digital natives, beware! Roads along canyons are to be used which partially no network coverage! :-) But you are rewarded with images of rock structures and cloud formations passing in front of mountain ranges which probably aren´t reported by others so far. With a brownish dust cloud behind our car, we felt, for the first time, close to Africa. WIldehodekloof is a "colonial style" lodge set up in the cloof (canyon) named after Wildehonde (wild dogs). Before it became an open visitor lodge, I was told it was used as a private hunting lodge, because lots of wild animal around used to approach the canyon for water. This tells that Wildehondekloof is much less an artificially set up game lodge just resembling a zoo. Wildehondekloof appears more like a large game reserve which has developed naturally, including the hills and valleys around. Wildehondekloof offers safaris / game drives like other game lodges do, too. But in case of Wildehondekloof, semi-domesticated Big 5 won´t file along the jeep for pictures. One really has to look for them for a while, like one would expect in wilderness! Our safari guide Christiaan really did a good job in detecting all sorts of small and big wildlife, which to our urbanized eyes where nearly invisible at first. I will never forget the encounter with a group of giraffes, which allowed us to come very close. When quite a large turtle blocked the way for the jeep, we expected Christiaan, the guide, to do the "Crocodile Dundee"-thing: focussing his mental force onto the turtle to make it walk away. But turtle decided otherwise, so we all took a coffee break with explanations on fauna and flora of the countryside. Wildehondekloof is separated from larger settlements. This means: nights are darker than you are used to! Christiaan, our guide, was setting up a telescope late evening and gave an introduction to the universe. We could see the stars of the southern hemisphere, and the Milky Way was easily detectable, too. We were a group of 6 with various expectations, including previous experience in South Africa. But Wildehondekloof and the staff of the lodge have left a strong impression on everyone. I guess if Hemingway was born 80 years later, he would have come to Wildehondekloof to write on his books on the veranda, to look at the animals at day and to the stars at night, reflecting on life ...

The room was fantastic, the food was delicious and the staff were all wonderful. We stopped off for one night on our way back to Cape Town and we were sorry we couldn’t stay another night. I highly recommend a visit to Wildehondekloof! We didn’t have time to do a game drive, but we’ll do so next time!

We stayed for 2 nights here and wished we had had more time. Everything was perfect - the scenery was stunning, the food and accommodation was first class, and the service wonderful. The morning game drive with Quentin was an experience never to be forgotten and a highlight of our stay in South Africa. The early evenings were so special and peaceful with Nysa, Impala and Wildebeast grazing on the lawns right outside our room. Definitely a place to come back to on our next visit to SA.