Cradle Boutique Hotel: A true wildlife paradise

Unspoiled vistas are hard to find, even in wildlife concessions. There’s always a building or cellphone mast spoiling the fantasy of endless, untouched land.

But 10 minutes from Lanseria International Airport the Cradle Boutique Hotel is a place where those wild dreams come alive again.

The restaurant is Gauteng’s shining star for a day trip – and now that spring is back, you can bet feet will trickle back on to the fabulous deck.

With its modern architectural design in stone, steel and glass, and retractable floor-to-ceiling glass doors on three sides the outside is always inside.

The verandah gives diners a 180° view of a picturesque highveld and the game-filled valley and rolling hills of the property. Sundowners is a must in what is a hinterland not even 30 minutes from Pretoria or Johannesburg.

The menu is pocket friendly, and there’s a bush-bistro theme that, as kitchie as it sounds, really works with the ultra-modernity of the space.  A picnic basket can also be enjoyed in the shade of white stinkwood trees next to the Motsetse stream situated in the reserve.

The Cradle Boutique Hotel is situated on 7 000 hectares and boasts eight luxury “hip-eco” timber-and-thatch rooms and a stunning owners’ cottage. The rooms (if you get to stay over) also take advantage of the incredible view of the surrounding hills.

While stay overs are nice, it’s the day trip appeal of the place that really makes it one of the province’s better finds.

The Malapa Fossil Tour is an exclusive private guided tour in an open vehicle with the unique opportunity of experiencing firsthand two famous fossil dig sites in the Cradle of Humankind. Gladysvale and Malapa are the key attractions sites on this tour.

This is the only private guided tour designated to conduct fossil tours to these two sites.

The reserve protects some of the largest and most pristine areas of the remaining high-altitude dolomitic grasslands which are second only to fynbos in terms of floral diversity.

The reserve is home to leopard and brown hyena as well as antelope like eland, blesbok, kudu, blue wildebeest and red hartebeest.

What is so striking is that this ancient landscape is a stone’s throw from Africa’s second-largest urban area. It is paradise found.

Another attraction is Children of the Stars, a sculptural art exhibition made up of stones placed at strategic positions within the landscape. Each stone is sandblasted with a few lines of the Babel text to include languages from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas.

Except for one stone, Calculus Moo, all of them feature English. Calculus Moo keeps Babel text, with the following story.

“The people is one, and they have all one language, and this they begin to do. And now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

“Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.