Travel African Bush

13/10/2023

Book your stay to meet our local guides
082 371 3571

12/10/2023

www.thornforest.com

13/03/2023

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=115597821477717&id=100090824975056&mibextid=qC1gEa

💥Mondays just got a lot better! 💥

Book at 0647263044 or email [email protected].

08/02/2023

09/09/2021

Yes or No (African Bush)

21/02/2021

17/10/2020

Vanoggend word daar nie tyd gegun vir gras groei onder die voete nie. 05h30 lui die wekkers en word daar koffie gemaak, beskuit geeët en lor...

16/07/2020

IT IS TIME TO SPEAK OUT AND SAVE OUR INDUSTRY, JOBS, LIVES & OUR CONSERVATION AREAS.

After careful deliberation our CEO Brett Gehren has written this letter to our President Cyril Ramaphosa in a desperate please to open up domestic leisure travel in South Africa.

We cannot stand by any longer. We need to speak out, SHARE and get action. Please share this post far and wide. Lives depend on tourism in SA!

15 July 2020
Dear Mr President

I voted for you. I also quietly encouraged others to follow. When you put us into the first three week lock down, my heart filled at your decisive leadership and commanding vision. Today we are marching towards our fourth month of lockdown. I'm not going to give airtime to the nonsensical rules that have left our nation astonished.

Walk me through this Mr President. We have the largest tourism economy in Africa, a few hundred billion rand. 10% of all people employed in this country are employed in tourism. Tourism has deep roots; I have seen again and again how it can have an immediate and substantial effect on a rural community which doesn't have many other options. This is not to be sneezed at by a country with the highest Gini coefficient in the world. And yet, I can jump into a taxi with 16 other people (a light load where I come from) and sit in skin to skin contact with strangers for half an hour, hop out at a restaurant and enjoy a long lunch - as long it's under 50 people - and then onto the casino for a night of games. But heaven forbid you try visit a wilderness game or beach lodge and enjoy outside activities, heaps of fresh air and sleep in your private room, all the time enjoying world class health and safety protocols. Traversing in open air game viewers is expressly not permitted. You can, however, drive yourselves around game reserves all squashed in a car. Our taxi industry is a fraction in size of your tourism industry Mr President. Perhaps you can explain why Promise one of our chefs, or Sthembiso, one of our guides, is not accorded the same recognition and respect? These skilled and valuable people now sit at home with hungry families, not earning a cent.

I have a few hundred employees who support a few thousand people, they are currently earning zero income. We didn't rest on our laurels when we were shut down. Thuma Mina - send me - we made the rallying call to all the people of Isibindi and they stepped forward and without hesitation gave of their time; game rangers, chefs, dive instructors, housekeepers, pool cleaners, marketeers, walking guides, barmen, laundry attendants they all stepped up. Our Isibindi Foundation raised over half a million rand for food parcels and are still distributing over and over again. I was arrested on one of these food drops because the Disaster Management officials said we were breaking the Act as they personally had to es**rt each and every one of our food parcels over vast areas. Using two 4-wheel drives (with nine officials and traffic police) to follow our game viewers who were handing out potatoes, meal and sugar beans to our starving rural communities. They drove for an hour every day just to reach the point from whence they would meet and "es**rt" our vehicles. The community saw right through this parody. They would have been better off with more beans. But that's another story for another day.

You've had some of the best brains in the country available to you for 4 months to come up with a considered rescue plan for tourism. Our bewildered tourism minister - when asked of her plans for tourism in a plenary session - said she has plans to open an online platform for promoting clothing, handcraft and art. The timeline of capricious promises, presidential website commitments and then hurried retractions and poorly drafted and misleading gazettes, are safely stored on google. You addressed our nation on Sunday night, yet declined to speak of or to the tourism industry and yet you gazetted, hours later, a very clear instruction that leisure tourism was not to be opened, indefinitely. The callousness you have shown to our industry and it's employees is staggering. This huge industry, which was to be our country's honeypot, with mining and construction tanking in recent years, has been broken in half. This will not only affect me and my staff and colleagues and friends in the industry. it will affect each and every South African.

Please reconsider the plight of our tourism sector. If intra-provincial tourism was allowed now it would help keep the industry partially intact. This would provide much needed salaries and a starting platform for when provincial and international borders open and South Africa can stand proud, once again, as a world class destination.

Vuka, Ubone. Ikati lilele eziko!

Yours sincerely
Brett Gehren
CEO ISIBINDI AFRICA LODGES www.isibindi.co.za

10/02/2020

4Trek Adventures

15/12/2019

One week in one park!

11/12/2019

06/11/2019

SELF-CATERING LODGE SPECIAL - Spoil the family with a FREE Lion feeding tour OR Sunset drive OR a Morning drive. Offer valid from 7 November - 15 December 2019.



Mabalingwe Game Reserve Mabalingwe Nature Reserve BiGfive Lion Park

05/11/2019

Guest of the ground floor Apartments at Elephant Springs have an outside seating area where they can enjoy meals with friends and loved ones.

21/10/2019

A preview of the wild camping campsites we use. 'n Voorskou van die boskampering kampplekke wat ons gebruik.

16/10/2019

https://www.facebook.com/1360916564045536/posts/1644933495643840?sfns=mo

16/10/2019

An interesting section of the Luvuvhu River Valley 4x4 Trail to the Lambwe Campsite. This is the first of three wild campsites on the trail.

09/10/2019

Bushveld !!

02/10/2019

Wild camping on the banks of the Letaba River in Letaba Ranch.
This is part of the Baderukwe five night 4x4 tour.

01/10/2019

Beauty... Gracious... Majestic... Powerful...
So many words to decribe this amazing leopard our guests got to witness on their safari.
She was clearly on her own mission... Not angry, yet very intimidating with her snarling face which was aimed towards something in the bush in front of her!
Definitely one of those moments that sends shivers down your spine!



www.outlook.co.za