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Hearland: At This Remote Cradle Of Civilization, A Different, More Conscientous Kind Of Luxury Can Be Found

Luxury travel the way we know it—with hotel staffers catering to a guest’s every whim, even the most unreasonable ones—is often deemed the penultimate escape experience. But what’s the fun in everything going your way? Travel’s best benefit is how it opens your eyes not just to the beauty of the world and the diversity of cultures, but also to how your perspective can still broaden and deepen with every novel encounter in a foreign land.

Holing up in a luxury suite is definitely an option at the Bushmans Kloof Lodge’s well-appointed accommodations, but that would be cheating yourself out of a marvelous experience. Nestled at the foot of the Cederberg Mountains in South Africa, this award-winning lodge and natural reservation has for a breathtaking backdrop the 500-year old wind-sculpted sandstone formations, whose craggy surfaces go from burnt orange to golden, depending on how the sunlight falls on them. These mountains have served as home to Bushman tribes for 120,000 years—in short, home to mankind’s oldest nation whose culture came close to extinction by 1900.

The wilderness surrounding it has also long been home to indigenous flora and fauna such as fynbos and the endangered Cape Mountain Zebra, the Cape Clawless Otter, and the Clanwilliam Yellowfish. Since it falls within the Cape Floral Kingdom, the reservation was declared as a UNESCO World Heritage Site Cape Floral Kingdom in 2004. Bushmans Kloof itself is accredited by the prestigious Relais & Châteaux association and is regarded as one of the premiere eco-lodges in the world.