Sabi Sabi Earth Lodge

Built into the landscape, Earth Lodge offers striking visual imagery and great guiding experiences in a private concession.

• Cool architecture: structures are built into the landscape
• Knowledgeable and enthusiastic guides
• Private concession (land is not shared with other lodges)

One of the oldest private game reserves in the Sabi Sands, Sabi Sabi encompasses four lodges in the southwestern section of the park. Earth Lodge is the brand’s most exclusive property and its most visually striking. Arriving at the lodge is a memorable experience – there is no discernible structure, no thatch-roof house with high ceilings and an open entryway, as is common in the area. Instead, the entrance looks like a rocky outcrop, and you walk through a tunnel to emerge in an airy lobby. There are no outer walls, just a concrete roof and pillars that extend from the rocks, blending into the landscape. It’s reminiscent of Tadao Ando’s structures on Naoshima Island in Japan, albeit with less minimalism and more wilderness.

The lobby is impressive, with its large driftwood furniture, a sunken wading pool and a rough-hewn rock garden as its focal point. It photographs beautifully, as these stark/wild vistas often do, but it also depicts a sense drastically different from what most lodges aim for: Earth Lodge feels spare, empty and remote. There is no lushness here, no plush furnishings, evocative animal hides or colorful curios that convey the sense of a luxury safari. Sabi Sabi’s theme for this lodge is “tomorrow” (the other Sabi Sabi lodges being “yesterday” and “today”) but their version of it is one where we eschew superfluous details and go back to the basics – where we live within mud-packed walls but with modern comforts like wifi and air-conditioning.

Earth lodge has 13 suites, including a Presidential Suite, and each is a standalone concrete building with a spacious bedroom, terrace with a plunge pool and a bathroom finished in stone and cement. All the décor is in earth tones, naturally, and the mud-packed walls keep the room dark and cool even when the African sun blazes outside.

Besides the design, the other element that made Earth Lodge so memorable to me were the guides. Guides make or break the experience of safari, and here, the ones I met seemed to truly love their job and believe in sharing the best possible safari experience with guests. Like the building they work in, the guides at Earth Lodge convey a characteristic missing from other places: going back to basics and an earnest attempt at being one with nature.

Note that Sabi Sabi has its own landing strip, an advantage for travelers who want to fly directly to or from their lodge. Other properties in Sabi Sands either share a landing strip or have none, requiring a 2.5 hour drive to Mpumalanga Airport.

Safari-goers looking for something different will find it here at Sabi Sabi Earth Lodge. It’s unique and memorable, but its avant-garde design is not for first-timers looking for the sumptuous designs of most traditional lodges.

Note: Earth Lodge does not accept children, but Sabi Sabi has three other lodges within the reserve that allow children of all ages.