Accommodation at Chestnut Country Lodge, Mpumalanga, South Africa

Safari Lodges and Accommodation in South Africa

Accommodation at Chestnut Country Lodge, Mpumalanga, South Africa

CHESTNUT COUNTRY LODGE

Standard country lodge in the Lowveld
Just five en suite bedrooms
Patios with beautiful views
Large swimming pool and pool deck

The Chestnut Country Lodge is situated in the beautiful Kiepersol district near Hazyview in Mpumalanga and boasts magnificent mountain and valley views, together with luxury accommodation and fine dining.

Our home away from home hospitality combined with quiet ambient surroundings will leave you feeling refreshed and revitalised.

A leisurely walk on our 48 hectare farm with indigenous bush is a must for bird watchers and walkers alike. Take a walk along a canopied path up to Leopard Rock and enjoy the magnificent view of the Sabie Valley below.

ACCOMMODATION:

Standard Double & Twin Rooms:
ll rooms have an overhead ceiling fan. Each room is furnished individually with luxury comforters & blankets or duvets. Each room has its own patio overlooking beautiful views. Standard Rooms 1-5 and 10–12 are smaller than the Luxury Suites 6–9 & The Chestnut Suite.

Luxury Suites:
These rooms are larger than our standard double & twin rooms. Each have a large covered patio with chairs and table overlooking a magnificent view. The rooms are large with a separate lounge area within the room.

The Chestnut Suite:
King Size Bed, bathroom en-suite (separate bath and shower), large corner bath and His & Her basins, privately enclosed patio with outside shower.

All rooms have tea & coffee making facilities

FACILITIES:
Our facilities include a large crystal clear swimming pool surrounded by a wooden pool deck overlooking fabulous views which gives you the feeling of sitting among the trees - an ideal spot to grab the binoculars and birdwatch! There are a number of birds who feed and nest among the kiaat, lowveld chestnuts, wild fig and mobola plum trees to name but a few of the many indigenous trees on the property. A resident brown-hooded kingfisher is a delight to watch as he bathes in the garden birdbath!

The cosy bar and lounge are also comfortable places to relax at the end of a day for a sundowner or drinks before dinner. Our 3-course table d’hôte meal is prepared using only the freshest of herbs, vegetables in season and quality meats, fish and poultry for our discerning guests.

Chestnut Country Lodge offers a superb Continental Buffet Breakfast as well as a full English Breakfast each morning.

ACTIVITIES:
There are many things to do and see in the area, some of which are:
- Mpumalanga Day Excursions & Escorted Tours
- Reflexology Treatments
- Shangana Cultural Village
- Tsinini Silk Farm
- Cheetah Project
- Moholoholo Rehabilition Centre
- Balloons Over Africa - Hot Air Ballooning
- River Rafting
- A wide variety of world-class golf courses can be found nearby
- Sudwala Caves
- Horse-riding
- Mzuri Horse Trails near Hazyview
- Kaapsehoop Horse Trails near Nelspruit
- 4 x 4 Driving Skills Course - Half-day and Full-day
- Mountain Biking

SCENIC ATTRACTIONS:
chestnut Country Lodge is ideally situated to all the major scenic attractions of Mpumalanga, namely Blyde River Canyon, 3 Rondawels, Bourkes Luck Potholes, Gods Window, the historic mining town of Pilgrims Rest as well as the various and beautiful waterfalls in and around Sabie.

The world-famous Kruger National Park is easily accessed via Numbi and Phabeni Gates which are a mere 30 minute drive away or guests can enter into the Park at Paul Kruger Gate some 54 kms away. Morning, afternoon, full-day or night-safaris can be arranged with local safari operators whose skilled game rangers can show you some of South Africa’s best game viewing.

Other recreational activities in the area include, river rafting, horse-riding, abseiling, walking trails, quad biking, birding, kloofing, microlight flights, hot air ballooning, 4-wheel drive skills course, trout fishing in the Sabie area as well as a number of international standard golf courses to choose from nearby.

IN THE AREA:

HAZYVIEW:
(± 20 kms)
Near the Paul Kruger gate of the Kruger National Park, Hazyview derives its name from the summer haze that envelopes the low bush land. Unfortunately when this light veil descends, your photographs will not truly reflect the stunning beauty of the area, but the panoramas will undoubtedly remain in your memory. The area is reputed to have the best climate in the world for bananas and you will see row upon row of these lush tropical plantations. Many visitors to Kruger National Park stay overnight in Hazyview rather than in the park itself, as it is quite closeby.

Tropical paradise and trading post of Mpumalanga province, this town has its romantic name because of the excellent banana plantations which dominate the landscape. This village was originally promulgated in 1959 when the first post office was established and Hazyview station came into being when the old Selati Railway line was diverted outside the western border of the Kruger National Park to Kaapmuiden in the late 1960s.

The town is strategically placed midway between spectacular scenery of the escarpment and the wild life experience of the Kruger National Park, Hazyview provides the best of both worlds.

BLYDE RIVER CANYON AND BOURKE'S LUCK POTHOLES:
(± 90 kms)
Plunging more than a thousand metres to the Lowveld from the highlands of the Transvaal Drakensberg, the Blyde River cuts away the massive escarpment to carve out the only true canyon in South Africa. Viewed from a height of some 700 metres, the river threads through bands of fynbos and temperate rain forest to the dense pile of tropical bush on the plain.

One can find the Bourke's Luck potholes where the Treur River joins the Blyde River. Beyond the potholes the river plunges into one of the most spectacular canyons on the African continent. On both sides the galleries of sandstone cliffs rise between 600m and 800m above the river bed. These cliffs are dominated by three rondavel-shaped promontories, called the Three Sisters or Three Rondavels.

KRUGER NATIONAL PARK:
(± 20 kms)
The world-famous Kruger National Park is easily accessed via Numbi and Phabeni Gates which is a mere 20 kms away or guests can enter into the Park at Paul Kruger Gate some 54 kms away.

In the field of nature conservation South Africa has a long and proud history. In 1898 the Sabie Game Reserve was established largely through the efforts of President Paul Kruger. Its change in legal status from game reserve to national park is the result of the tireless efforts of the first Warden, Col James Stevenson-Hamilton, who finally achieved this goal in 1926. On 31 May of that year, Piet Grobler, then Minister of Lands, announced in Parliament the birth of South Africa's first national park, henceforth to be known as the Kruger National Park in honour of its founding father.

Now, 100 years later, Kruger National Park has grown from a relatively unknown conservation area into an internationally recognised national park that ranks among the ten most important in the world.

SUDWALA CAVES:
Caves of the Induna
The Sudwala Caves, major tourist attraction of the Lowveld, are located in the Mankelekele hills in the valley of the Houtbosloop ('wood bush creek') about 35 km north-west of Nelspruit. These caves are of the same kind as the famous Cango Caves of the Little Karoo. Over millions of years water percolating from above has eroded the dolomite of the hills, forming large caverns with strangely fashioned stalactites and stalagmites.

Interconnected chambers with a floor surface of 14 000 m over a distance of some 600 m are open to the public. The first chamber, the largest, is called the P R Owen Hall, for the owner of the farm on which the caves are situated. Roughly circular, the cavern is 18 m high with a diameter of 66 m. The tallest stalagmite in the caves is about 11 m high. Legend has it that there is no end to these caves; they may extend for more than 40 km under the mountains as far as Lydenburg!

As in the case of the Cango Caves, many new passages and chambers have been discovered since the caves were first opened to the public in 1964. In 1967 two explorers penetrated another 2,5 km into the mountain, discovering many brilliant and untainted stalactites and stalagmites, some coloured, and a hall measuring 90 by 45 m. In 1968 spelaeologist Harold Jackson also discovered several new chambers.

The caves are at least 2 000 million years old. This was established by the presence on the ceiling of fossilised colonies of the algae Collenia. These 'stromatolites', one of the earliest forms of life in southern Africa, were alive when the earth's atmosphere was composed of nitrogen and carbon dioxide. They converted the latter into oxygen, preparing the way for higher forms of life.

The caves were discovered in the early 19th century during a Swazi succession melodrama. The find was made by Somquba, son of Swazi king Sobhuza I, who, with his followers, fled here in fear of his brother Mswati. The dispute also involved substantial numbers of royal cattle. Somquba and his people built a village next to the entrance to the caves, where they hid every time Mswati and his punitive parties arrived on the scene. Several times Mswati and his men vainly made huge fires in the entrance to smoke out his quarry. One day they struck unexpectedly and killed Somquba and many of his tribesmen. Those who survived stayed on under a headman or Induna by the name of Sudwala, hence the name of the caves.

In the forecourt to the entrance to the Sudwala Caves the owners have established a dinosaur park with true-to-life replicas of these reptiles which lived 100 million years ago.

MPUMALANGA:
Mpumalanga is an ancient land, with evidence of human habitation stretching back 100 000 years, and the first major kingdoms and mining empires beginning 46 000 years ago. The region's pre-colonial history is, however, still largely unexplored.

Mpumalanga means 'Place where the sun rises', and is bordered by Mozambique and Swaziland in the east, and Gauteng in the west. It is situated mainly on the high plateau grasslands of the Middleveld, which roll eastwards for hundreds of kilometres. In the north-east it rises towards mountain peaks and then terminates in an immense and breathtaking escarpment. In places this escarpment plunges hundreds of metres down to the low-lying area known as the Lowveld.

Mpumalanga falls mainly within the Grassland Biome. The Escarprnent and the Lowveld form a transitional zone between this grassland area and the Savannah Biome. Long sweeps of undulating grasslands abruptly change to the thickly forested ravines and thundering waterfalls of the escarpment, only to change again to present the subtropical wildlife splendour of the Lowveld. The escarpment and the Lowveld have always been popular tourist attractions. Now that new borders have been drawn for this province, only the southern, albeit most popular, part of the Kruger National Park is within this province. The Kruger National Park will, however, remain an untouched unit, a province for wildlife on its own.

The area is crisscrossed by a network of excellent roads and railway connections, making it highly accessible to the tourist. Because of its popularity as a tourist heartland, Mpumalanga is also well served by a number of small airports.

Nelspruit is the legislative capital of the province. This town is the administrative and business centre of the Lowveld and provides a perfect base from which to explore the province. Witbank is the centre of the local coal-mining industry; Standerton, in the south, is renowned for its large dairy industry; Piet Retief in the south-east is a production area for tropical fruit and sugar; while a large sugar industry is also found at Malelane in the east. Ermelo is the district in South Africa which produces the most wool; Barberton is one of the oldest gold-mining towns in South Africa; and Sabie is situated in the forestry heartland of the country. The green gold of Sabie and Graskop provides a large part of the country's total requirement for forestry products.

These forestry plantations are also an ideal backdrop for ecotourism opportunities, with a variety of popular hiking trails, myriad water-falls, patches of indigenous forest and a variety of nature reserves. The biggest of these is the Blyde River Canyon Nature Reserve, where God's Window provides unforgettable vistas of the Lowveld. An oasis is provided by the mineral springs at Badplaas. Chrissiesmeer is the largest natural freshwater lake in South Africa. It is famous for its large variety of aquatic birds, especially flamingos. The Sudwala Caves, deep in the dolomite rocks of the surrounding mountains, is a worth-while tourist stop. This evergreen corner of the country has enormous tourism potential.

The Lowveld area is rich in the history of pioneers and explorers. Gold-rush towns such as Pilgrim's Rest, Graskop, Kaapsche Hoop and Barberton, give tourists the feel of days gone by. Pilgrim's Rest is a museum town, while Barberton boasts the first stock exchange established in the country. Botshabelo Mission Station near Middelburg is a romantic reminder of the days when European missionaries came to Africa to spread Christianity. Ermelo has attractions ranging from the huts of the extinct Leghoya/Tlokoa peoples, to well-preserved San paintings.

A visit to Mpumalanga is not complete without testing the trout streams around Belfast, Dullstroom, Machadodorp and Lydenburg; experiencing a trip on the Rovos Rail steam train, walking the Fanie Botha Hiking Trail, the very first established in the National Hiking Way System of South Africa; driving up Long Tom Pass to reach the highest point in Mpumalanga; and visiting Skukuza Rest Camp in the Kruger National Park, one of several overnight stays available in the park. Many upmarket, private game lodges cater to the tourist's every need.