57 Waterberg

Welgevonden keeps itself to itself. The reserve covers 36,000 hectares of the Waterberg plateau and lets in no day visitors, and guests leave their cars at the West Gate, where the lodge comes to collect them. 57 Waterberg is ten suites spread through the bush around a main lodge under a steep, dark thatch, its deck running out on stone piers over the rocks. Some of the suites are thatched cottages; others are flat-roofed pavilions of glass and timber, each with a plunge pool on its deck. Ours was the thatched kind, and a lovely room, rustic down to the mosquito nets, which in a malaria-free reserve count as a courtesy.

The day turns on two drives, out at dawn and again at dusk, and ours went with a hugely experienced guide. The reserve holds the Big Five among more than 50 kinds of mammal and some 300 of bird, and guests writing more recently rate the guides' knowledge of it as highly as we did. Between drives, life goes at a slower pace. The lodge's infinity pool sits at the edge of the deck, looking out over the reserve, and that and a book are most of what the middle of the day holds. On a grey day there is not much else to do, and getting lost in a good book was no hardship.

Our three nights were full board, and we ate superbly, with good wine to be had alongside. The kitchen sends out roasts carved pink, with a charred rib and a pool of dark sauce, and some nights dinner moves to the boma, cooked over an open fire under the stars. Children over eight are welcome, and two of the Luxury Suites interconnect to make a family unit; for anyone younger, the lodge asks to be contacted first.

Of the Big Five, the one we will never forget is an elephant that got overexcited, and an overexcited elephant is a hair-raising thing to be anywhere near.