Inside the New Few & Far Luvhondo in South Africa :Review

When Sarah Dusek moved from Montana to Cape Town, she had hung up her hospitality boots. The cofounder of Under Canvas, a collection of tented camps on the edge of national parks across the U.S., had sold the business and stepped down as CEO. She was hoping to spend time in a new city, working on a new business—a venture capital fund that focuses on female entrepreneurs in South Africa—and enjoying a part of the world she had fallen madly in love with more than two decades ago while working for an aid company in Zimbabwe. 

Her intention was always to go back to the continent, a place she had not stopped thinking about. 

“My love of Africa and my passion for its people just did not go away,” says Dusek. 

Her plan, however, was not to open another hospitality project—until she and her husband started scouting for a plot to build a weekend house. They discovered a sprawling piece of land in the Soutpansberg in northeastern South Africa’s wild Limpopo region. It was everything they weren’t looking for. Not only was 5,000 hectares far too large for a holiday home for a family of four, but it was a hike to get there from Cape Town: two flights, followed by a 90-minute drive along a highway ragged with potholes and another 30 minutes along a craggy road that’s mostly shale.

But the moment Dusek laid eyes on the mountainous land, she couldn’t get it out of her head. 

“It had the most incredible vistas, extraordinary scenery and pristine biodiversity,” she says.  

The property, a former hunting farm, was also surrounded by neighbors with a similar mindset: They were intent on protecting the land, which is at grave risk from coal mining. As a conservationist, it tugged at Dusek’s heart. 

“It sounds silly, but it felt like the land chose us,” she says. And so they built a lodge to sustain it.  

Limpopo, a mountainous province that’s divided from Zimbabwe and Botswana by the Limpopo River, is one of the more underserved parts of South Africa. Though it’s arguably one of the most beautiful, densely thicketed, with thorn trees, shrubs, ancient baobabs and hundreds of knobbly koppies, infrastructure is failing and employment opportunities are limited. Dusek, a lifelong conservationist, knew that building a lodge in this hard-to-reach place would be challenging but also rewarding (the only convenient factor was that it is a short drive from the Rovos Rail station).

“People told us we couldn’t possibly put a five-star lodge in Limpopo,” says Dusek. “[But] if we can take people there, then we help protect it and conserve it,” she says, adding that they’ve launched a carbon credit program to help achieve this, too. 

“[We thought], is there a way to regenerate the land and have it pay for itself?”

In addition to carbon credits, the couple launched the Few & Far eco-hospitality brand, and recently, they opened Luvhondo, a six-room tented camp intended to be light on the land. They anchored the property on the cliffside where an existing hunting lodge had been, so as not to disturb any more turf. Lucky were they that the former owners chose such a breathtaking spot with sweeping views over the mountains punctuated with baobab trees. Naturally, the couple opted for tented suites that are mostly crafted from wood, with four poster beds draped with mosquito nets and baths positioned next to the floor-to-ceiling windows and doors. The wide decks are littered with woven sun beds and bookmarked by an outside shower and splash pool.

Aware that the lodge is in the middle of nowhere and that they’d need some tricks up their sleeves to draw travelers, the duo enlisted an ambitious young chef to dazzle their tastebuds. Nhlakanipho Sokhela (a.k.a. Sox), formerly at Grootbos, cooks up the kind of food you would not expect to find in the bush: grilled duck, parmesan risotto, and black garlic butter. He’s always tinkering in the kitchen, listening to jazz, while preparing kombucha or cinnamon ice cream. Nailing these kinds of luxury details—in a place with terrain so rocky they needed an indestructible Toyota Hi-Lux to shuttle building materials—was hardly an easy task. But considering the Duseks basically invented glamping in the U.S., an extravagant off-the-grid lodge wasn’t totally out of their wheelhouse. Only now they had done it in a land that was largely foreign to them, in an area where tourism is scarce. 

Though not heavily touristed, historically, Limpopo is one of the most significant parts of the country, where artifacts from the Mapungubwe kingdom that date back to 800 AD have been unearthed. Visitors to Mapungubwe National Park can visit the museum, which houses fragile objects such as ceramics as well as ornate jewelry and intricate beads traded with China and the Middle East a thousand years ago. In a cool museum room, a glass cabinet displays one of the area’s greatest findings: a treasured rhino statue about the size of a tea cup, encased with fine sheets of gold. Yet it’s easy to understand why this park doesn’t get as much foot traffic as it should: It’s largely forgotten and underfunded (you have to work hard to see animals). It’s also an obstacle-filled trek. 

To get there (from Luvhondo), it’s a two hour drive along a shabby one-lane road with potholes the size of saucers, where trucks from Zimbabwe fly past and rogue elephants sometimes search for trees along the curb. But those who do manage to make it are rewarded with glimpses of towering red boulders and precious baobabs that sprout from emerald plains of grass, as well as the great Limpopo River, which separates South Africa from Zimbabwe and Botswana. From the park’s main picnic spot, you can even spy Botswana’s blue and white flag proudly planted on the opposite side of the river. In the summertime, after the rains, the river swells and the dry landscape transforms green, delighting hungry elephants. It’s also here where you can see elephants, cats and hyenas, which, right now, you definitely won’t find at Luvhondo. 

The Duseks are acutely aware that offering a safari experience in a place where there’s not much wildlife is a tall order, especially when you’re asking them to make a very long trek. The animals you do catch glimpses of—mostly zebra, giraffe, and kudu—can sometimes be skittish, due to the land’s hunting past. But according to Dusek, it’s worlds apart from when they first arrived five years ago. 

“Now, the giraffes will stand and watch you,” she says. Previously they would run away. 

For now, the benefit of a reserve sans swarms of animals is that guests can hike through the mountains without worrying about stumbling upon an angry buffalo or temperamental elephant. But plans to repopulate the reserve are on the way. In the future, the Duseks hope to drop the fences with neighboring farms to allow for freer movement of wildlife (already they’re chatting with the neighboring buffalo ranch), as well as introduce more antelope and even white and black rhino. Another major plan is to create a one-of-a-kind solar-powered aerial cable car that will criss-cross the property, giving guests access to hidden canyons and waterfalls. 

“There are thousands of places to go on safari in Africa, [so] how do we do something different?” asks Dusek. “When you can’t rely on lions, and people seeing extraordinary wildlife, you have to be smarter and more thoughtful.” 

Zipping across the property in a suspended carriage is as innovative and fun as it is a practical solution. 

“Because the mountains are quite hard to traverse we thought about how we could access more of the mountain without creating any more roads,” says Dusek.

The greater vision for this reserve doesn’t end there. The couple has plans of opening another 25-room camp. They also have an ambitious scheme to drop more fences with neighbors and eventually open an historic wildlife corridor that could run up to Mapungubwe and even northern Kruger National Park. Already, they are in discussions with San Parks and Conserve Global about how they can develop an initiative that goes beyond the Soutpansberg and regenerate millions of hectares of land where local people can benefit.

“The area is incredibly critical,” says Dusek. “This [project] becomes even more significant and meaningful if you can open up wildlife corridors and connect prime areas.” Especially as others eye it for mining. “It helps us quash the coal,” she says. “There’s an alternative, you know.”

 And what better alternative than keeping it almost exactly as it is.