Some friends and I just returned from 3 days at Sabi Sabi's 4-year old Earth Lodge. I am an avid adventure traveller and have stayed at many great places but this definitely comes in at or close to the best...with any place as good or better being much more expensive.

Earth Lodge is over 6000 hectares of private land in the Sabi Sands area bordering Kruger National Park. As of over 10 years ago there is no fence between the Park and the private land, and the nature of the bush there combined with the Sabi River makes it one of the world's great game viewing locations.

The decor at Earth Lodge is what I would call "organic minimalist": Buildings of cement colored to look like earth and mixed with grass so the effect is of a luxury traditional building. Much of the furniture and art work is made of gigantic pieces of local wood which had come down the Sabi River in the floods about 4 years ago. Truly spectacular stuff done by an artist who worked there for months during construction. Other more standard furniture like the beds and couches are tasteful and luxuriously comfortable.

The routine at Earth Lodge is a 5:30 AM wakeup for a 3-hour long game drive starting at 6. You then have breakfast...part buffet and part ordered from a menu and can take a walk with a ranger afterwards. From then until about 4:30 is free time (with lunch around 1 PM) during which you can (and should) do some combination of resting by your bungalow's own little plunge pool or getting a spa treatment or hanging out with other guests, most of whom are likely to be very interesting people.

The afternoon game drive is also three hours, starting at 5 PM and ending in the dark. During both game drives, you'll usually have a break somewhere for a beverage and snack with a great view of the bush.

The game drive is done with a ranger and a spotter. The ranger drives and the spotter sits on a chair mounted on the front of the Land Rover and looks for animals or signs of animals....hopefully he does not also serve as lion bait, or at least not too effectively for his own health.

We spent half an hour one evening with a group of 5 rhinos and at least half an hour the next evening with a group of 6 lions including a few playful cubs and a mother lion who walked to our truck and lay down 5 feet from us. They are so beautiful and calm that it's easy to forget how wild and dangerous they really are.

We also saw one leopard (although at some distance) as well as kudu, waterbok, warthog, impala, baboons, monkeys, lots of intersting birds, and the one hippo who often relaxes in a pond near the lodge.

The animals around Sabi have just the right attitude about us....they ignore us. In some places they are so skittish that you can never get a decent view. In other places they have been fed by humans and taught unnatural and even dangerous behaviors such as the baboons in Kruger who jump on the car and reach into windows. No such issues at Sabi where the usual response is somewhere between mild caution and mild disinterest, leaving us to watch them acting as they would if we were not there taking pictures and making memories.

The food at Earth Lodge was quite good overall, maybe a 7 out of 10....no place that far out is perfect, but the service is great and friendly and all the staff go out of their way to make sure guests have everything they need and want.

At lunch on the second day an elephant came by the water hole/fountain which is just next to the breakfast/lunch area. It was one of many fantastic animal life moments during our few days.

Earth Lodge has a very nice wine cellar and the manager or head of the kitchen operations will be glad to show you around and give you recommendations on what to have with your meal.

I recommend taking a look at their package pricing...it makes 3 nights cost about the same as two nights normally would. Also if you are more than two people and you don't mind the drive, you might consider renting a car and driving up since the 90 minute charter flight is very expensive...over US$500 round trip per person. The flight is, however, very convenient, with Sabi Sabi's landing strip only about 5 minutes from Earth Lodge (maybe half an hour from their other two lodges, Selati and Bush.)

The internet connection at Earth Lodge is surprisingly fast and it's available for free all the time....though I recommend that you don't take too much of your time indoors while in such a spectacular environment.

Earth Lodge is very simply about nature and relaxation and truly excels at both.

All in all, especially with package pricing, Sabi Sabi's Earth Lodge gets my highest recommendation.