Two weeks of magical moments at Sun Eden

I have a pair of old slippers. The soles are coming apart, the inner lining is breaking up. They’ve been lying at the end of the bed for three days when I decide to tidy the room and throw them away.

 I casually mention my plan to Mrs W, who is standing not two feet away; half-looking at her and half-looking at my slippers, I plunge my hand into the shoe.

 Thirty seconds later, when I have finished screaming and scraped myself off the ceiling, I begin the search for the large brown frog who had been snoozing inside, cosy and undisturbed.

Welcome to South Africa; a country of wild contradictions, of boundless beauty, of unbelievable wildlife and, for the most part, genuinely friendly people.

 We are enjoying the holiday of a lifetime at Sun Eden (www.suneden.com), a naturist resort some 30 miles from Pretoria and 70 miles north of Johannesburg, deep in the bushveld of Gauteng (formerly Northern Transvaal). The nearest supermarket is at least 15 miles away, the new Dinokeng Big 5 game reserve sits just next door, supply of hot water to our otherwise outstanding chalet is hit-and-miss, to put it mildly.

 But the whole place is wonderful, even the frog (who vanished behind the king-sized bed and re-emerged unharmed 24 hours later, to be gently dropped into a nearby mud pool) and the shongololos (see here - http://www.focusonpictures.com/zuidafrika/insectplus/insect5.htm), brightly coloured millipedes who are ubiquitous on the floors and walls.

 After a trying couple of months, it would have been all too easy for Mrs W and I to throw off all our clothes, pull up the sunloungers, pour a cold drink and spend 12 days watching the warm sun drift across the sky, with occasional visits to the swimming pool five minutes’ walk away.

 Had we been on desert-like Fuerteventura, we would have done. But you can’t come to a continent as magical as Africa and lie in the sun for 12 days.

 So we visited the Cullinan diamond mine, where some of the largest precious stones in the world, including some which lie in the British Crown jewels, have been found; we enjoyed a couple of quite spectacular drives around the game reserve, rattling around in the back of a truck while experienced game rangers pointed out wildebeest and zebra and giraffe and rhinos and some of South Africa’s thousands of bird species; we visited Mahela View lion camp, where the owner keeps three tame lions out in the wild while carrying out an extensive programme of educating tourists about this most magical of animals; we even enjoyed a wondrous day at the Tranquility Spa lodge (www.Tranquillityspalodge.co.za) , a new venue in a valley at the side of the Bobbejaansberg mountains with a fantastic view over the African landscape.

 The latter supplied two of the most memorable moments of the holiday. The owners, a former airline pilot and his Welsh-born wife are friends of our hosts at Sun Eden and we were invited, on just our second night in SA, to his 60th birthday party.

 As we enjoyed drinks on the terrace and watched a perfect sun gently slip below the horizon, a giraffe appeared on the other side of a fence at the end of the garden, gave us a disinterested glance and slowly bent his enormous front legs to drink from a pool of water.

 It was a breathtaking moment, a birthday party of a dozen people watching quietly as one of nature’s most extraordinary creations stood not 50 feet away in his natural habitat. At the time, I cursed myself for not bringing my camera; it was only when we got home that night that I realised it had been in Mrs W’s handbag all evening.

 The other great moment? We took advantage of one of Tranquillity’s reasonably-priced full day spa packages. If you’ve never spent a hour sitting nude and sipping cold lager with your other half in a jacuzzi in the spacious grounds of an African bush lodge before taking lunch and then undergoing an extraordinary full body massage, it is an experience I recommend wholeheartedly.

 Contradictions? This part of Gauteng is predominantly Afrikaans and although we did not discern any real sense of animosity between white and black neighbour (in fact, it was often the opposite), we didn’t have to look far to see white farmers living in opulent surroundings while their black employees went home to little more than tin shacks.

 We drove back to Johannesburg Airport down a four-lane highway which was quieter than an English country road on a summer afternoon, yet watched black workers walking miles down dirt tracks to catch one of the state-sponsored buses which ferries them to and from the big towns. And we were, of course, many miles from any of the cities where I am sure you will see a different South Africa - the one where the Minister of Justice has just been jailed for 15 years for corruption, for instance.

 Of course, this blog wouldn’t be complete without a mention of the naturist side of our holiday. For obvious historical reasons, naturism is still relatively new in South Africa; Sun Eden is one of just a handful of venues although a new British-owned resort, Vasnat, opened up in Cape Town while we were in the country.

 Strict attitudes to the human body, which were part of the religions of most South Africans for years if not centuries, are fading away and we found the members and guests at Sun Eden just as relaxed, friendly and non-judgmental as naturists all around the world; indeed, we can already count some of them as friends.

 And there is something about Africa which lends itself to naturism. Sitting in the garden in the nude, enjoying a vast breakfast, while impalas and springboks grazed in the grounds and brightly-coloured birds twittered in the trees is another great memory; South Africa’s fondness for braais (barbecues) meant we spent many an evening chatting outside into the late hours with an iced glass of wine in one hand, a barbecue pork chop in the other and not a stitch of clothing to be seen amid smiling, happy people. 

 We had no preconceptions about South Africa but now we have no doubt that we want to go back to the veld. Sun Eden, to which you can book accommodation direct without going through a British travel agent, is the perfect place to do so.