Accommodation most charming southeastern Africa

For: Javier Brandoli (text and photos)
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It was like dusting off memories having to open close to 40.000 photographs that I have been taking in these years of life in Africa to finish outlining the book. In each folder a country and in each of the twelve sub-Saharan countries that I have traveled a collection of folders and souvenirs. Many already lazy, although it's only almost four years, It seems like I was there a few centuries ago. Time is moving faster than my head.

The thing is that reviewing all that work I started talking with some friends about which were the best hotels I had been in. I then made a head selection of the places that had marked me. Today that selection is here. One goes through dozens of hotels where you sleep and leave a piece of your time. Most are used and march, even very good. It is not a question of quantity or quality, It is magic that brings you back to places.

Most are used and march, even very good

Without a doubt that is a subjective concept. You are passionate because you lived a fun night, passional, melancholic. She is passionate about that meal in which you just received great news or for that eternal conversation with those hitherto unknown. Yes, true that all that influences, But the accommodations that I present now have in my opinion a special character that goes beyond all that is subjective to make their charm subjectively objective. Here is my list of the most charming hotels I have been in Africa. Are probably, a 10 percent of the total I've been. A list that I recommend with absolute honesty.

Villas do Indian, Vilanculos, Mozambique

On a deserted beach, in front of the spectacular Bazaruto archipelago. A bonfire at night in the same arena, facing the sea, in silence. I liked it so much that it went to my house for six months. Now i go less, I live in Maputo and I get close to the only accommodation that I could call home. That space has something special. Maybe it doesn't have anything so obvious, so obvious, as if to understand it without living it. It's because, like all authentic things that don't need any more answers.

Albergue gorge ghosts, Out, Namibia

The Schlucht Geister mountain lodge is nestled under some rocks, in the middle of a nowhere from which you can see a golden desert sunset. A big kitchen, like those of yesteryear, and two rooms with bunk beds and two bathrooms. The absolute nothing. At night in fire and millions of stars. It seems like you're out of the world. Nothing, nothing.

Agulhas Country Lodge , Cape Agulhas, South Africa,

It is a stone inn built from the sea. Its walls are sea, its rooms are the sea and its windows an excuse not to get wet. By authentic, for being the last of the whole continent, the one furthest south, for there is nothing below, for being the last hotel in Africa.

Royal Zambezi Lodge, Lower Zambezi, Zambia

They invited me to do a report and I think that since then I have never finished leaving. I flew with a plane, I landed in the middle of the jungle, along the Zambezi river, and I spent three unforgettable nights. It is an expensive site and it is a unique site. Their luxury is based on the brutal normality with which they take care of every detail without making you feel like a stranger who had the dust of Africa cleaned.. Crocodiles can be seen from the room, Hippos, Elephants. I'd say it's perfect.

Island House, Zanzibar, Tanzania

An old Arab house, like so many in Stone Town, restored and decorated in detail. Nothing is overloaded, everything seems placed in its right term. On its terrace, the breakfasts were dreamy and the dinners were memorable.. Here comes the tricky point: turns out there were two cooks and two shifts: one was lazy or normal or lazy for normal, but the other was a chosen one. I left there after repeating dishes, order recipes, give hugs and enjoy food as has happened to me in few places on this earth. And that terrace, and that tuna tartare and the rooftops of the city and the lobster salad and the mosque ...

Soweto Conference Centre, Johannesburg, South Africa

I chose it for my work as a journalist. In the middle of Soweto, en Kliptown, It seemed to me that it was the best place to tell the then possible death of Nelson Mandela. What I found is a site full of sympathy, as always in south africa, run by people from the neighborhood that symbolizes the best face of the country I love most in Africa (maybe because he is the one who least wants the rest). The rooms are good and the hotel is a tribute to the fight for freedom. It is in the square where the Freedom Charter, in the very heart of the famous neighborhood. It was there from where I understood a little the soul of Soweto, partly from South Africa. I liked to go back to the hotel at night and see the bonfires in the streets, the misery of the environment and understand that there is a future while they open projects like that.

Qandil Camp, Masai Mara, Kenya

I said it recently when I wrote about this camp of the famous Masai Mara, I have the feeling that it was the first time that I walked free through the savannah. It's for the enclave, that is wild and beautiful and above it belongs to you as a guest in property. Only clients can walk free in a space where there are hyenas, Elephants, Giraffes, leopards ... and we. It's natural, authentic, comfortable, no rarities to raise the price. The couple who run it is formidable.

The Haven, Jinja, Uganda

the hotel is very good, the rooms too, and the restaurant too. Not a reproach to anything, but I recommend this place for the place it is. For its sunset and its sunrise sitting in your cabin. If it were a field, then I would recommend it too and tell them to go with their tent. It is about 30 kilometers from the beginning of the Nile, on Lake Victoria. In a curve of the emblematic flow, that surrounds some small islands where hundreds of birds fly over, where the water is heard and where one is serenely happy just by looking.

Ongongo Camp, Hot spring, Namibia

It couldn't be harder to get in and out. The road is terrible, especially on the detour after the village of Warmquelle. Just for 4×4. It's a campsite, without anything, just a few bathrooms, a small and humble bar and nothing but dry land where to place your tent. But, then, If you follow the path behind the bar, the unexpected appears: a small lagoon of water that comes from a waterfall that gushes out hidden between the rocks. And it's all for you, and it's wild, and you bathe at night naked, if you want, because there is no one else in that place. Because that small lagoon and that waterfall are yours for a night in which only the moon and the stars illuminate you. There is also no more light for several kilometers around.

Oliver's Camp, Tarangire, Tanzania

It is a real luxury camp. I found it special because of the park, so lonely compared to the giants of tourism around him. I remember that I woke up and heard hundreds of birds. Then I unzipped the store with nothing missing and looked at the acacias shrouded in mist. It almost looked like a painting. I sat down to listen to nature, to observe her there, in front of me, with a coffee. It's an expensive place, but it is a spectacular expensive place.

Mutarazi Cottages, Nyanga, Zimbabwe

Three complete cabins, self service, for rent in Nyanga National Park. I liked that place that looked more like the Alps than Africa. I do not know, I did not expect something so different, Those cabins made of stone on the outside and wood on the inside were unique there. Next to some mountains where I savored the cold and after a hike in search of the Mutarazi Falls. We walk 30 minutes through a narrow path where you had to move aside the thick vegetation to move forward and we found a waterfall of almost 800 meters high collapsing to the ground. We went back to our cabins, we had dinner, we lit the bonfire and fell asleep thinking we weren't in Africa.

Camping in the Okavango Delta, Botswana

I can't tell where it went. I do not know where that island was nor could I recognize it on a map that I never placed. I know that I got on some mokoros and that two hours later, after crossing the river shoveling, I was in the middle of an island of Okavango Delta setting up the tents. I know I took a nap lying on a boat, with the flow, that at night we made a fire and that I fell asleep listening to the roar of some hippos that seemed like they would enter my tent. The next morning I took a shower, back, in the wild waters.

Tawi Lodge, Amboseli, Kenya.

When one lights some candles, open the water in a large old bathtub, he gets in and looks out the window and sees Kilimanjaro ... he knows he's in a special place. The Tawi Lodge is. For its immense rooms, its good food and wines and its trough where herds of zebras pass, gacelas the elephants. You contemplate everything from the pool of natural water, having a drink on the terrace or having breakfast. All of Africa is palpable in this luxurious place. Everything, in the shadow of Kilimanjaro.

Bushman´s Baobab, Liwonde, Malawi

One can choose luxury tent, normal store or plant your own store. All are good options in this accommodation of a South African "crazy" located along a canal of Lake Malombe, in the Liwonde National Park. They dine with candles, showers with candles and ends the day at a bonfire listening to the hippos. The site has something of the madness of its creator, of his lack of control and his deep knowledge of Africa.

Continue ... I hope.

P. D. Sorry I can't contact details for each of the sites. Can be informed here to look for them. Some of them I have visited almost four years ago but they still remain clear in my memory. There will be others just as fascinating that I did not see, Insurance, but these are the most charming accommodations I have ever been in.

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Comments (3)

  • Rosa

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    God Javier!!! Se te ha olvidado la «pensão Cariacò»

    Answer

  • Javier Brandoli

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    That is unforgivable and not like Amaia who tells me to include the Naara Eco Lodge. And all because they are spectacular stores, next to a lagoon, with a pool with views and a designer bar in a complex where everything is ecological. Nothing, Amaia I already realized during our route that I did not filter the information well.

    Answer

  • Monica

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    I eat Rosa nothing like Pensao Cariaco

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