Tswalu Game Reserve

The largest private game reserve in South Africa—it’s bigger than 20 Manhattans—Tswalu is owned and operated by the country’s immensely rich and conservation-minded Oppenheimer family (of the De Beers diamond company and much else). Their two magnificently designed small luxury lodges, Motse and Tarkuni, are the reserve’s only safari accommodations, and so their 30 or so guests have all of Tswalu to themselves at any given time. (We tend to avoid the overused word “exclusive,” but here it fits.)

Lions, Cape buffalo, leopards, and rare desert black rhino, along with aardvarks and pangolins, and a host of hardly less compelling mammals and avians (and more butterfly species than inhabit the entire British Isles) prosper in Tswalu’s diverse habitats, ranging from the high hills of the Korannaberg, to the sand dunes of the Kalahari, to golden savannahs.