Samara Karoo Reserve

Samara Karoo Reserve caps its entire 67,000-acre reserve at 40 guests at any one time, one of the lowest guest-to-land ratios of any private reserve in South Africa. The land, in the Great Karoo near Graaff-Reinet, Eastern Cape, was assembled from eleven former livestock farms from 1997 onward and is being actively rewilded across five vegetation biomes. Karoo Lodge, the largest of Samara's three properties, occupies a renovated nineteenth-century farmstead furnished with family antiques and heirloom books.

Its ten suites, eight Karoo Suites and two family suites sleeping up to 24, open onto private verandas, and two share a deck over a waterhole. Samara's signature experience is tracking wild cheetah on foot with a ranger, made possible by a reintroduction programme that began in 2003 with Sibella, a cheetah rescued from near-certain death whose descendants now range freely across the reserve. Guests can also spot aardvark on night drives, walk to Karoo fossil sites, or help plant spekboom as part of the land's rehabilitation. Dinners move between the farmhouse verandah, a fire-lit boma, and the open plains under the Karoo's dark sky.