Opulent Living Magazine no 6

Opulent Living SOUT H E R N A F R I CA + INDIAN OCEAN ISLANDS

T H E C O F F E E -TAB L E MAGAZ I N E F O R T H E F I N E R T H I N G S I N L I F E

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ISSUE NO 6

Opulent Living Welcome

“Any place that we love becomes our world.”

Oscar Wilde

Barbara Lenhard (Publisher) and Florian Gast (Editorial and Creative Director)

PhOtOgrAPh: fiOnA mAcPhersOn

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riting our Welcome page always reminds me how time flies. Here I am sitting in one of my favourite coffee shops in Cape Town, the vibe and energy of the city all around me, and I feel like it's just yesterday that we wrote our last Welcome – but it's already six months ago. And so much has happened since then: we moved into new offices, hosted a successful 2012 Summer Charity Auction, started our Opulent Living Gallery – and at the same time we compiled another edition of Opulent Living Magazine: our sixth! It has been put together with the help of an amazing team and we want to say a very big Thank You for the energy they’ve given it over the past six months! The result of this dedication is in your hand.

We’re looking at our biggest issue ever: 192 beautiful pages, filled with images

and articles that make us feel good. This is what we want – we want you to feel good and be inspired, too.

With this edition of Opulent Living Magazine we have extended our radar to the Indian Ocean islands. As ever, though, we've chosen places that will give you the red carpet treatment and brands that will make you feel special. We like our readers to be treated like royalty and experience properties where service and passion are key ingredients. That’s why we work with these hotels, lodges and brands, and why they are part of the Opulent Living world.

Some new business developments inspired the idea of a dedicated Opulent Living Style section – an idea that became an obsession and was fun to create. Close to my own heart is an indulgent fashion shoot featuring designer shoes. I'm sure most of our female readers will enjoy it too, because what woman doesn't love gorgeous shoes? We met Hannah and chose her to be our “Cape Town Cinderella”.

Of course, we had to balance this with features for men! Showcasing top brands wrapped in great stories, they are all visually interesting and great reads.

Cuisine also features strongly in this edition. In South Africa, we enjoy a diversity of local dishes and we love our “foodies”. The personalities behind the top restaurants aim for perfection with unwavering passion, creating explosions of flavours using the freshest ingredients.

We chose 12 of the country's most acclaimed chefs for our feature on South African cuisine – and met them all on the most extraordinary four-day photoshoot.

Their work is incredible, their characters diverse and their dishes look like art and taste like heaven. (Who, by the way, knows how heaven tastes?) Thanks to our presenting sponsor, Johnny Walker Blue Label, and the support of Foodcorp, we have a wonderful 28 pages to share with you. We are thrilled with the results, and the unique chefs's portraits will form the first collection in our Opulent Living Gallery. Just have a look at our website, www.opulentliving.co.za.

We spent another exciting day with Anton and Lionel Smit, two internationally recognised South African artists who think big. Our interview gives an insight into their father-son relationship and is an inspiration to us all.

We’re also extending our online presence, with “Behind The Scenes” footage of both this fascinating interview and our chefs's shoot. Talking about online: you've always been able to read flipthrough versions of all our previous issues online – but now you can download them for free on the App Store as well.

One of our partners once emailed us her husband’s motto in life: “Go Big or Go Bust” is his credo. So if you do something, do it “grand” or don’t do it at all! It's something we've implemented both in our work and private lives – and we hope you will do the same.

Happy 2012 and, as usual, carpe diem!

Warmest regards Barbara & Florian

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Contributors

Imprint

Fiona MacPherson has immersed herself in the land of photography and filming since her early teens. She has directed and shot for both local and international clients, filling her lens with exotic locations and fascinating personalities, and brought a wonderful moody light to both our fashion and food features.

Adrian Burford loves cars, so it was no hardship to turn his attention to luxury British models for this issue. In fact, he still pinches himself when he considers that for 25 years he's spent his working weeks getting paid to indulge his passion for wheels. Leaving weekends free for

Publisher: Barbara Lenhard barbara@opulentliving.co.za Editorial & Creative Director: Florian Gast florian@opulentliving.co.za Managing Editor: Michelle Snaddon Copy Editor: Anne Duncan Designer: Joanna Orr Contributors: Sebastian Bartlett, Nikki Benatar, Jane Broughton, Diane de Beer, Pippa de Bruyn, Anne Duncan, Keri Harvey, Kit Heathcock, Robyn Hodson, Richard Holmes, Bridget McNulty, Mark Porter, Michelle Snaddon, Jocelyn Warrington, Lisa van Aswegen

For advertising and sales please contact sales@opulentliving.co.za

another passion: climbing mountains.

Harry Fisher, once a resolute Londoner, is now based in South Africa, where he loves exploring the country on either two wheels or in four. Absolutely committed to finding the perfect ride, Harry is the proverbial petrol head – so was the perfect choice to explore the history of Porsche's open-topped racers.

Alexandra Dodd, an independent cultural critic and contributor to Art South Africa,

HandEye (US) and Ceramic Review (UK), was instantly captivated and energised by the intersection between visual culture, memoir

Newspace Publishing CC Cape Town, South Africa www.newspace.co.za, info@newspace.co.za Issue no. 6: published in May 2012 Issue no. 7: to be published November 2012 Issue no. 8: to be published May 2013 Distribution: throughout South Africa and internationally via preferred partners · in first and business class on selected airlines · in exclusive lounges, showrooms and boutique stores · nationwide via direct mail · internationally via selected distributors Circulation: 30 000 Nominal charge: R180

and lost histories when she interviewed father

Printed in South Africa by Tandym, Cape Town

and son, Anton and Lionel Smit.

www.opulentliving.co.za www.facebook.com/opulentliving

Ken Kessler is unimpressed by the 21st century so he enjoys retro boy's toys. He has written four books on luxury hi-fi and collects chronographs, hard-boiled detective novels and film noir DVDs. For our feature on luxury watches, he shared his knowledge on the intricate art of complications.

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Opulent Living magazine is published by Newspace Publishing CC. Copyright Newspace Publishing CC. No portion of this publication may be reproduced without prior written consent from Newspace Publishing or the authors. The publishers are not responsible for any unsolicited material. The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of Newspace Publishing or the editors.

Harry the hippo

CoVER ImAgES (FRom LEFt to RIgHt) CoURtESy oF: FIonA mACPHERSon/oPULEnt LIVIng mAgAzInE, FREgAtE ISLAnD PRIVAtE, FoUR SEASonS, PoRSCHE, FIonA mACPHERSon/oPULEnt LIVIng mAgAzInE WHItE AnD BLUE FLoWERED VAnILLA oRCHID ILLUStRAtIon FRom ImAgES oF mEDICInAL PLAntS, 1796 / gREAtStoCK

Some of the creative minds behind our features…

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D E LA I R E

E S T A T E

Delaire Graff Estate Helshoogte Pass Stellenbosch South Africa www.100x100capri.it ~ www.delaire.co.za

Grand Café & Room Cape Town · A retro escape

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10 2nd Avenue Houghton Estate · Escape to tranquillity

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African Pride Mosselberg on Grotto Beach · Seaside state of mind

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Upton Hall · Regal reminiscence

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Sofitel So Mauritius · Island charm meets high design

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Tintswalo Atlantic · A secret hideaway perched on the edge of the ocean

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Contents

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Baines' River Camp · A magical river encounter

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Palazzo Montecasino · Immersed in Renaissance splendour

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LUX* Maldives · Island surprise

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INTERVIEW · AN ALCHEMY OF METAL AND PAINT

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Grande Roche Hotel · Grande dame of the Winelands

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LUX* Belle Mare · A light-hearted production of an island dream

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Contents

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speciaL: sOUTH aFRica's TOp cHeFs

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LUX* Ile de La Réunion · A treasure chest stashed between mountain and sea

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Royal Chundu · A spot of pure gold

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The Cellars-Hohenort · Green delight

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Four Seasons Resort Seychelles · A hilltop retreat in a quiet corner of paradise

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Constance Le Prince Maurice · An oasis of serene style

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Morukuru Family · Time well spent

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Kurland Hotel · The scent of roses

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Opulent Living Style Porsche · An icon for generations

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Designer shoes · Flights of fancy

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Whisky · Celebration in a bottle

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Charlize Theron · Ambassador for South Africa's youth

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Watches · The art of complications

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British cars · Accelerating past British restraint

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Opulent finds · Indulgent buys

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Frégate Island Private · A gem quite out of this world

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The Orient Boutique Hotel · An enthralling encounter in an exotic fantasy world

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The Retreat Selous · Absolute seclusion

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Opulent Events · Stylesetters and newsmakers

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n GRAnd CAfe & Room CApe Town Camps Bay, Cape Town, SA Telephone: +27 (0)21 438 4253 email: concierge@grandafrica.com website: www.GrandAfrica.com

A retro escape Grand Café & Room Cape Town ∙ South Africa The discreet and unassuming entrance of the Grand Room above the Grand Café on Camps Bay’s bustling beachfront is exactly why it is Cape Town’s best-kept secret. And may it stay that way, because it’s the most intimate private dining venue in town – or the perfect hideaway for two, whichever is desired.

At the top of the stairs, a world of retro-style sophistication awaits. Put on the music and it could be an apartment in Paris or Buenos Aires, but a touch of colonial glamour and the gentle swish of waves is a reminder of the palm-studded promenade and beach below.

As an exclusive venue that comes with 24-hour butler service, one of the world’s best-stocked bars and a bespoke vinotheque housing a wide variety of fine wines, it’s one of the most exciting locations for a private party. Guests can spill out onto the balcony late into the night on balmy evenings or retreat to the understated grandeur of the living area with its beautiful antiques and furnishings, each handpicked and collected over time from all over the world.

There is just one bedroom in this apartment, where a Grand-style bed dressed in the finest Italian Hall Collection linen awaits. Sink into it after a heavenly scented bath in the double-size films for the perfect end to an evening.

Styled with extraordinary attention to detail that allows guests to cocoon in its indulgent Cocoon in the comfort of the kingsize bed, or host a party around the fivemetre-long “mini bar”.

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offerings with a personal selection of books and objets d’art, it’s easy to understand what the signature Grand experience is all about, and why those who love The Grand in Plettenberg Bay eagerly awaited the opening of this escapist retreat in Cape Town.

Michelle Snaddon

PHoToGRAPHS: GRAnd AfRICA

copper slipper tub, or slip into a snug Grand gown to relax and enjoy the selection of classic

escape to tranquillity 10 2nd Avenue Houghton Estate ∙ South Africa guests are greeted with warm south african hospitality at 10 2nd avenue houghton estate, an exclusive five-star boutique hotel that offers superb luxury, effortless style and discreet service. embraced by lush, landscaped gardens, this exquisite retreat surrounds guests with natural beauty, gourmet cuisine and special moments. It's the ideal destination for business travellers as it's within easy striking distance of the busy business hubs of rosebank and sandton, mere minutes from the rosebank gautrain station, and just 20 minutes from or tambo International airport. But it's also superb for a relaxing getaway, having perfected the art of the serene city hideaway. the moment you arrive, the hustle and the bustle of the city fades into the distance. each room is deliciously luxurious, with small touches – such as fresh fruit on arrival, a complimentary

n 10 2nd AvEnuE HougHton EStAtE Johannesburg, SA telephone: +27 (0)11 853 2400 / +27 (0)11 483 3037

soft drink mini bar and homemade shortbread – that make you feel not only at home, but at home

Email: tensecond@houghtonestate.com

in an english country manor. of course, they have all the expected creature comforts too: satellite

Website: www.houghtonestate.com

tv, free Wi-Fi and docking stations for iPhones and iPads, fabulously soft robes, crackling fireplaces and underfloor heating for the cold winter months and air-conditioning for the summer.

If you’re looking to relax after a morning of meetings, head to the sparkling pool for a lazy afternoon in the sun. end the afternoon with a sundowner at the cocktail bar, then make your way to the restaurant or wine cellar for an unforgettable evening of fine cuisine and exceptional wine. the chefs are on hand to personally create whatever your palate desires, and all dietary requirements are gladly catered for. From the gourmet dinners to champagne breakfasts, your tastebuds are in for a real treat.

In fact, you’ll be hard pressed to remember why else anyone comes to Johannesburg – why work or

PhotograPhs: 10 2nd avenue houghton estate

play when you can indulge in the luxury of 10 2nd avenue houghton estate?

Bridget McNulty

The stately property is set in large, landscaped gardens and features luxurious interiors decorated in classic English country style.

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Seaside state of mind African Pride Mosselberg on Grotto Beach ∙ South Africa With a backdrop of the spectacular Mosselberg mountains and sweeping Indian Ocean views,

n AFRICAN PRIDE MOSSELBERG

African Pride Mosselberg on Grotto Beach is a serene seaside sanctuary in languid Walker Bay.

ON GROTTO BEACH

Modern on the outside, with clean lines and elegant curves hinting at wave formations, this

Hermanus, Western Cape, SA

five-star guesthouse offers a decadent retreat on the inside, with five spacious suites individually appointed to honour flora and fauna of the region. The palette throughout is neutral, with just one colour highlight alluding to the theme: washed steel-grey is the emphasis in the Southern

Telephone: +27 (0)28 314 0055 Email: bookings@mosselberg.co.za Website: www.mosselberg.co.za

Right Suite; splashes of aubergine and sage characterise the Fynbos Suite.

The centrepiece in each is the opulently dressed kingsize bed, while comfortable lounge areas are positioned to maximise the view. They also have unobtrusive sleeper couches that fold out so children can share the room, and baby cots are available on request. Ceiling fans, underfloor heating, TVs, safes, honesty bars, along with tea and coffee stations ensure every home comfort, and there are private decks for lazy afternoons and whale watching in season.

Breakfast (full English and continental), lunch and dinner are prepared with passion by resident chef Damian Gramegna, who uses only the freshest local ingredients in his delectable meals.

Vegetarians and vegans are also happily catered for, and the region’s finest wines are on offer.

For those who come simply to soak up the summer sun, there’s a heated pool and loungers on the deck, and Blue Flag Grotto Beach, with safe swimming for children, is literally on your doorstep.

There’s also plenty else on offer – mountain biking, horseriding, scuba diving, golf and beer- or Keri Harvey

Calm colours and gentle lines ensure harmony with natural surroundings and emphasise the inviting indoor-outdoor flow of this beachfront hideaway.

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PHOTOGRAPHS: AFRICAN PRIDE MOSSElBERG ON GROTTO BEACH

wine-tasting. Here, beauty is everywhere and outdoor theatre abounds.

This 1930s mansion on the slopes of Upper Morningside has been lovingly restored to its former colonial grandeur and given a stylish dash of African chic.

Regal reminiscence Upton Hall ∙ South Africa There is something about descending a grand staircase beneath a glittering chandelier that

n Upton HAll Morningside, Durban, SA telephone: +27 (0)31 303 7987 Email: marketing@uptonhall.co.za (bookings) or info@uptonhall.co.za (general information) Website: www.uptonhall.co.za

sweeps every romantic back in time to an era of chic couture and stylish soirées. Follow the seductive chink of ice blocks against cut-crystal glasses to the terrace and drink in breathtaking views of Durban, all the way to the ocean.

Fast forward three quarters of a century and Upton Hall stands proud, lovingly restored to her former glory and recently unveiled as one of Durban’s finest five-star boutique guesthouses. The view from the pool deck is still vast, taking in the bustle of a contemporary city and the Moses Mabhida Stadium with its iconic sculpted arch in the distance.

The elegant 1930s mansion now features chic African-inspired interiors. Each of the 10 luxurious suites has a name that evokes the richness of the continent – from Diamond Mining and Agriculture to Beaches, Wildlife and Rain Forest. While no two are alike in either décor or dimensions, they share every modern convenience and a sense of abundant luxury – sinking into custom-made, 400-thread-count Egyptian cotton linen has never felt this decadent.

PHoToGRAPHS: UPToN HAll

In the kitchen, Chef Nardia conjures up sensational menus that are contemporary, fresh and, above all, creative. Gather in the gracious wood-panelled lounge for an apéritif of the finest French Champagne, then make your way to the fine dining restaurant to sample her innovative dishes, served with the best local wines. Afterwards, retire to the cigar bar for a cognac or vintage port. During the day, take a long, leisurely lunch on the wide, covered veranda, then while away the afternoon on a lounger next to the pool. This is colonial indulgence at its best. Robyn Hodson

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Sofitel So Mauritius

Island charm meets high design It’s not often that style-savvy sophisticates find a home from home on a tropical island.

But Sofitel So have broken new ground with a designer boutique property on the unspoilt south coast of Mauritius, creating a chic style statement among the palms and soft sands. The result is a beachside idyll where zen-like minimalism holds hands with laid-back local charm.

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balmy sandy beach on the south coast of Mauritius might not be the first place you’d expect to find iconic design at the cutting edge of cool. But at the Sofitel So, near the fishing village of Bel Ombre, a laidback beach holiday vibe combines with innovative architecture and high-fashion décor to produce a luxury island idyll with an extra dash of sophistication. And idyllic it is, with tall palms waving in the

breeze, a symphony of waves breaking on the coral reef framing the turquoise lagoon, and smiling, welcoming faces ready to indulge every whim.

On arrival guests are whisked on a golf cart through gardens shaded by palms and casuarina trees straight to their suite, where check-in happens in comfort and privacy. The journey through the 34 acres of tropical garden gives a glimpse of Thai architect, Lek Bunnag’s grand

plan. Little bridges span the streams of the Belle Riviere watercourse as it wanders down to join the Indian Ocean.

Water is a constant theme, from the moated restaurant to the spa reached by stepping stones over more sparkling water. The 86 suites, six beach villas and two large private villas are integrated gracefully and unobtrusively into the verdant surrounds of nature.

The suites are individual domed pods

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Light and airy, the spacious suites combine soothing white with vibrant colour.

At the back, the stylish en suite bathroom opens out into a leafy private courtyard with outdoor shower.

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radiating out village-like from the central area, each with its own private terrace and garden, and views through trees to the beach.

The hand of a master is immediately apparent in the deceptively simple dÊcor, It’s no surprise to discover that the So team went to the top for its first designer property, engaging renowned Japanese fashion designer Kenzo Takada, now retired from his fashion empire and employing his clean-cut genius in the world of interiors.

He took inspiration from the island, its natural beauty and its blend of cultures, developing a stylish hibiscus motif drawn from the Chinese, African and Indian influences that inform island life. This motif repeats in cushions and pillows throughout the hotel, as well as on the staff uniforms, successfully encapsulating the carefree vibe of the tropical beach in elegant simplicity.

The cathedral-like grandeur of Le Flamboyant restaurant (left and bottom) makes for a sleek dining experience. The La Plage beach restaurant (below) is more laid back, but just as chic.

Shades of white and neutrals decorate the suite interiors, a cool backdrop to the bold splash of vibrant colour in the bed surround – lime or tangerine or coral, depending on the suite. And what a bed – kingsize and exceptionally comfortable, it is the focus of the room, a wide boxy couch at the end fusing into one piece with it. The bold colour is taken up in the accessories, such as the vases and the bright hibiscus pillows.

All the mod cons are here, but discreetly placed. Air conditioning for when sea breezes aren’t enough, flatscreen TV with satellite decoder, Wi-Fi, iPod docking station – everything you might want.

Arched window and doors lead through to the bathroom, where even the toiletries are designed by Kenzo. Doors open to a secluded outdoor shower in the private courtyard at the back, where you can relax on a fat bean bag under the rain shower and contemplate life and nature.

On the private terrace in front, there is an open-air bathtub, just waiting to be filled with foam and petals as a charming surprise one evening.

If the suites are all elegant simplicity, the main restaurant, Le Flamboyant, has a dramatic grandeur that lives up to its name. It’s surrounded by water in a blue-tiled channel on all sides. As you enter over a wooden bridge, your eyes are drawn to the immense soaring space enclosed by the towering thatched roof.

At night, 12 pillars of electric blue light illuminate the stage as if for a drama, and more monumental columns give the impression of a modern cathedral with the sound of the sea a constant background oratorio.

The menu created by head chef Isabelle Alexandre promises French excellence with plenty of Mauritian flavour.

Sublime seafood dishes are her speciality, but Isabelle is just as happy to create

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Japanese fashion designer Kenzo Tanaka’s bright hibiscus motif brings a stylish vibrancy to the interior design.

The island beach vibe never loses sight of Kenzo’s chic design idiom, from the raked sand entrance garden to the sleek loungers and plush hammocks by the pool, and inviting beanbag chairs in the courtyard outside your suite.

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off-the-menu delicacies to suit individual tastes. So if you long to taste some local Creole specialities, a vegetarian masterpiece or some simple comfort food, all you have to do is ask.

Lunch at La Plage, the thatched beach restaurant, is more laid-back in ambience but no less delicious in flavour. At the sophisticated Le Takamaka bar, molecular cocktails manage to combine urban chic with a signature island charm.

The pampering continues at the So Spa. Step over the tranquil waters at the entrance and enter an oasis of serenity.

A courtyard encloses the main area, with slatted walls allowing gentle breezes to waft in and giving glimpses of the luxuriant garden outside. A calming keyhole garden adds a zen design element.

It’s all about capturing the spirit of the island and being at one with nature, so when you emerge from the hammam you shower in the secluded open air.

Treatments use natural Mauritian products based on coconut and papaya oils for beautifully relaxing and energy balancing massages. For those who like to be at the forefront of world trends, there is also acupuncture with gold needles from a French master acupuncturist (it’s the anti-ageing treatment that’s currently all the rage in Paris).

Even around the pool the design element of the hotel remains strong. The pool itself is an elongated curve lying parallel to the beach. It looks over the light sands to the lagoon, sheltered from the wind by a fringe of palms. Curvy loungers, lusciously padded hammocks and big squashy bean bags are grouped in islands along the grassy borders.

On the beach itself, more loungers and hammocks beckon. Here you can stroll on the soft silky sands or paddle in the warm waters of the lagoon. Look out for sharp coral, though, for here at the

PHOtOgraPHS: SOfitEl SO MauritiuS

south end of the island, coral is still alive and well. Snorkelling in the lagoon’s still waters is the best way to view its sparkling colour – and that of the many tropical fish who live among it. But if you’d rather not get your feet wet, then how about a ride in the hotel’s glass bottomed boat?

But a stay at Sofitel So is not only about spending your days on the beach, unless you want it to be, that is. The southern end of Mauritius abounds in activities for the more energetic – and a breakfast consultation with your personal butler can set up an enticing and varied programme for each day.

Quad biking at the neighbouring Frederica Nature Reserve takes in waterfalls and prolific wildlife, combining adrenaline rush with nature’s beauty. There is horseriding with trails for all abilities and plenty of dramatic scenery to explore, from gorges to waterfalls and stunning

clifftop views across the ocean. Or if you prefer wheels to hooves, take a scenic drive to explore the picturesque sugar fields, woods and waterfalls. Snorkelling with dolphins off Le Morne peninsula sounds irresistible, too.

If a day on the green is more your thing, then the superb golf course at the Domaine de Bel Ombre caters for masters and amateurs alike.

In fact, it’s tempting to stay longer just to fit in everything there is to do here. And with the friendly and attentive service, not just from your personal butler, but from all the serenely smiling Mauritian staff, it’s a wrench to leave.

The style and design may be what attract the eye and set the scene, but it is the genuine smiles and fantastic service that go deep, making you feel like one of a very privileged family living day by day in the middle of an impeccable beach paradise. n Kit Heathcock

Sofitel So Mauritius

Bel Ombre, MauritiuS telephone: +230 605 5800 Email: H6707-rE@sofitel.com Website: www.sofitel.com

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Tintswalo Atlantic ∙ South Africa

A secret hideaway perched on the edge of the ocean

Looking for the peace and tranquillity of unspoiled natural surrounds? Need to be close to Cape Town? Can’t decide whether you want to be at the sea or in the mountains? Want to experience five-star service, gourmet food and lavish interiors? Is privacy of paramount importance? Then look no further than Tintswalo Atlantic, a boutique hotel that offers discreet luxury in a prime position: a protected corner of Table Mountain National Park that’s wedged between the ocean and the slopes of Chapman’s Peak.

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Indigenous milkwood trees shade the main deck, the perfect spot to enjoy a sundowner and the view.

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t Tintswalo Atlantic the only soundtrack is the constant rushing and sighing of waves washing over a boulder-strewn beach.

This mingles with the invigorating scent of fresh sea air to transport visitors far from their everyday existence.

It’s an escape that’s just 20 minutes from the Cape Town city centre, but it’s a world away from the cosmopolitan hurly burly – insulated by a steep mountain slope, acres of unspoilt indigenous fynbos and a wide ocean bay that feeds into the expanse of the southern Atlantic.

An exclusive boutique hotel, Tintswalo Atlantic occupies a privileged position on the protected shoreline below Chapman’s Peak Drive, the scenic cliffside route that links the Cape Peninsula suburbs of Hout Bay and Noordhoek. The hotel lies on land that belongs to Table Mountain National Park and is so hidden away that motorists on the scenic drive don’t even register it’s there.

From above, the only clue to its existence is a discreet sign next to a set of wroughtiron gates. Here guests leave their cars in a secure parking area and are whisked down steep hairpin bends to the parallel universe below.

Down on the shoreline, the entrance to the lodge is understated but elegant – the low wood and glass buildings all designed to blend sympathetically with the surrounding wilderness of rocks, fynbos and indigenous milkwood trees.

At reception, friendly staff are at hand to offer a warm welcome, champagne at the ready. They offer such consistently excellent service throughout your stay that you feel like royalty, or at the very least like a movie star. In fact, more than one movie star has opted for the privacy of this secluded spot in the past few years, though managers Ryno and Melissa du Rand are too discreet to name names.

A light and spacious lounge opens off the reception area – but you hardly notice its subtle décor in aquamarines and browns, such is the allure of the ocean. You’ll immediately be drawn through the glass doors onto the wooden deck – where an ever-changing panorama of sea bedazzles!

The unimpeded view stretches across the bay to where the jutting Sentinel peak protects Hout Bay and its fishing harbour from the wider Atlantic.

Dappled shade ripples over cane sofas, tables, ottomans, loungers and – in one corner – a heated spa pool offering considerably warmer water than the notoriously chilly ocean below.

The deck is built around several 300-yearold white milkwood trees, not a branch of which were cut during the construction of Tintswalo Atlantic. Architect Neil Hayes-Hill designed the lodge in such a way that it would have minimal impact on this environmentally sensitive site, with its forest of around 200 trees. All the buildings are of wood and are raised on stilts to keep them clear of the vegetation – as well as safe from the vagaries of the tide on stormy winter nights.

The 10 guest suites are strung out along the shore in groups of two and three, shaded by the milkwoods and linked to the main lodge by a wooden walkway.

Each suite is large, luxurious and individual. Designer Caroline Wright has decorated them in stylish shades and rich textiles to reflect the personality of a famous island. In one you’ll find the cheerful Caribbean yellows and blues of Antigua, in another the cobalt blues and carved wood synonymous with Madura. Cape Town’s Robben Island is also represented, its decor reflecting the quirky African style of Nelson Mandela.

What unifies the suites, though, is their focus on the magnificent ocean view.

Large glass doors lead out onto a private deck that looks out over the water – so that guests have a grandstand view whether they’re outside or in. Even the bathtub, set next to a wide window in the spacious en-suite bathroom, is positioned to give guests the best of the view.

In the still of the morning, sit up in bed and watch the soft, reflected pinks of sunrise skim acrose the surface – and in the calm of the evening settle down in a comfortable deckchair and watch the setting sun transform both sea and sky into a play of fiery reds and oranges.

The suites have air-conditioning for those

The lodge has 10 spacious guest suites, all individually decorated in a style inspired by different islands, and leading through to luxurious bathrooms.

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Tintswalo Atlantic is framed by the sea on one side and the steep slopes of Chapman's Peak on the other.

summer days when the ocean breeze isn’t enough to keep you cool, and a ceramic wood-burning stove for a cheerful fire on winter days. There’s also discreet underfloor heating, as well as soft mohair blankets for when you want to curl up on one of the comfy armchairs and enjoy the untamed wildness of a stormy sea.

Though when the sun dips below the horizon, and the lights of Hout Bay start to twinkle from across the bay, the best place to be is back on the main deck. Here liquid golden sunsets are celebrated with a house tradition – throwing a pebble into the waves and making a wish. And such is the magic of this spot, that it’s easy to believe it will come true.

Should it be too cold to tarry outside, head into the guest lounge, where a log fire and pre-dinner drinks conjure up the atmosphere of an intimate house party.

Here invitingly deep sofas and armchairs, grouped around the fire or arranged to look out over the ocean, are upholstered in rich, tactile fabrics that echo the colours of Tintswalo Atlantic’s natural surrounds – the greens and browns of the forest and the blues of the sea and sky.

Pewter tables and crystal chandeliers add a glamorous, reflective depth.

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An open-plan interactive kitchen sets the tone for the adjoining dining area. Diners – whether they’re staying the night, or rounding off an executive conference in the quiet of the lodge’s exclusive conference facilities – are encouraged to share personal preferences, ask for recipes and discuss special requests.

Executive Chef Luzaan Stroh devises a different four-course meal every evening.

Whatever’s on her menu, though, is guaranteed to showcase the best seasonal local ingredients and be bursting with delectable flavours. The lodge often hosts gala food-and-wine-pairing evenings, three-course breakfast banquets and lavish lunches. Though if you prefer something more simple, such is the personal approach of the kitchen that it will happily serve you just one course – prepared precisely to your taste.

The lodge is so comfortable and peaceful, that it would be easy to hide away here and forget that the rest of Cape Town exists. In summer, you can spend your days strolling along the boulder-strewn shore, and soaking up the sun on the small sandy beach, where there’s space for just four sun loungers. In winter, curl up in an armchair and watch the Southern

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Gather for pre-dinner drinks in the elegant lounge (bottom), then sit down to a gourmet four-course meal in the sea-facing dining room (right).

Tintswalo Atlantic

PHOTOGRAPHS: TINTSWALO ATLANTIC

Hout Bay, Cape Town, SA Telephone: +27 (0)11 300 8888 (accommodation) or +27 (0)87 754 9300 (day visitors) Email: res1@tintswalo.com Website: www.tintswalo.com

Right whales that come into the bay to mate and calve. If you can summon up the energy, hike one of the trails that wind up the fynbos-covered slopes of Chapman’s Peak – and be rewarded with even more far-reaching views. Head back for a relaxing massage in the privacy of your suite, then make your way to the main deck where you can linger over a sumptuous afternoon tea.

If you do wish to head further afield, though, Tintswalo Atlantic is well-

placed to explore the Cape Peninsula.

The Constantia winelands are just a short drive away, as are the beaches of the southern peninsula. The city centre and the V&A Waterfront are also within easy driving distance.

Though, however much fun you have exploring, the best part of your day will be returning to this blissful spot – where the glorious ocean setting encourages deep relaxation and a perfect night’s rest.  Kit Heathcock

Tintswalo Atlantic is situated on the Hout Bay side of Chapman‘s Peak Drive in Cape Town. It‘s a sister property to Tintswalo at Waterfall in Gauteng, and to Tintswalo Safari Lodge and Manor House in Mpumalanga.

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A secluded deck overhanging the surging Zambezi River is the perfect spot for sundowners and game viewing. There's no better way to get to Baines’ than by private charter in its 2010 Pilatus PC12 NG (opposite).

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Baines' River Camp ∙ Zambia

A magical river encounter On the banks of Zambia’s mighty Zambezi River lies Baines’ River Camp, a tranquil retreat in one of Africa’s most important wilderness areas. Here, low-key luxe blends seamlessly with unspoilt Africa to deliver a magical and timeless safari experience.

B

aines’ River Camp in the Lower Zambezi Valley lets you get close to the earth without relinquishing any creature comforts. This luxury safari camp – named after legendary artist and explorer, John Thomas Baines – is set among giant tamarind and jackalberry trees on the lush banks of the Zambezi River, opposite Zimbabwe’s Mana Pools World Heritage Site.

It lies in the heart of the protected Eastern Chiawa Game Management Area,

adjoining the Lower Zambezi National Park: together they offer some 4 200 square kilometres of untouched bush that’s teeming with wildlife.

You’ll feel at home from the moment you arrive at the intimate, colonial-style safari lodge. The camp’s main verandah invites you to unwind, relax with a refreshing drink and lose yourself in the magic of Africa’s fourth-largest river, flowing just metres from your feet. Peace and tranquillity reign, interrupted only by the

splash and grunt of hippos and the cries of some of the 350 bird species that call this valley home. After a dip in the crystalclear pool overlooking the Zambezi, you may want to head out on your first wildlife activity or meander down the path to your own Explorer Suite.

Baines’ River Camp’s eight luxurious suites stretch out under the shade of vast trees along a path that winds gently through verdant riverine growth. In each sumptuous home-from-home, comfort is a

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The Zambezi is the heart and soul of life at Baines’ River Camp, with eight luxurious Explorer Suites (opposite, far right) spread out along its banks.

Boat safaris are offered daily and are the best way to experience its wildlife.

given. The suites are fully air-conditioned, although back-to-nature types will love both the generous sash windows that can be flung open to let the night air in and the fan that circles lazily beneath the lofty ceiling. You may even catch a glimpse of Baines’ regular four-legged visitors – such as elephants, buffalo, antelope, hippos or, if you’re very lucky, a leopard – from the privacy of your own covered verandah.

But with more than 60 free-roaming mammal species that you can view by foot, 4x4 game-drive vehicle or river, you’re probably going to tear yourself away from your suite sooner rather than later.

The Zambezi River sets the scene while you explore the vast unfenced wildlife area by boat, canoe, vehicle or foot under the guidance of professionals who are passionate about the African bush and their area of expertise. Baines’ offers an utterly uncontrived safari experience: with

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no fences, no traversing limitations and a vast wilderness expanse, you truly become an explorer in your own right.

The diverse vegetation ranges from Albida forests to lala palm groves, from grass plains to Miombo woodlands, from scrubby bush to lush wetland vegetation.

The ancient baobabs – some over 1 000 years old – are a sign that this landscape has remained unchanged since the days of the first explorers.

Start off with a river cruise into the heart of the Lower Zambezi National Park.

As you go with the flow, you'll see Nile crocodiles slip silently from the banks into the safety of the water while hippos eye you warily, snorting with disdain. The elephants that munch the sharp-bladed reeds and grasses on the islands dotting the river don’t even deign to notice you, so your safari boat can come within metres of these majestic giants. You may even

PhotogRaPhs: Baines‘ RiveR CamP

Baines‘ River Camp

catch a glimpse of Africa’s cats coming to drink at the water’s edge. The soundtrack to your cruise is the cry of the fish eagle, Zambia’s national bird. Tiny kingfishers hover and dart, while bee-eaters flash in the trees lining the river. Disembark onto the river bank, where Baines’ capable and charming guiding team wait to take you for a land-based safari drive.

There is plenty on offer for the more adventurous traveller. Once you have experienced a Baines’ canoe safari, you’ll never settle for anything less. Guided by experts, you slip silently down the Zambezi and through slower-moving channels.

Here you become one with the river and with its abundant game and birdlife. The experience is profoundly moving.

For a surge of adrenaline, head out on a sport-angling expedition. Capture a photo of a lifetime of your tiger fish – Africa’s most powerful freshwater game fish –

before you release this living trophy back into the fast-moving waters. Baines’ River Camp is also increasingly famous for its specialised safari workshops, led by international experts in their field: enjoy photographic safaris, birding expeditions, fly-fishing clinics and workshops about the intimate world of elephants.

With delectable fresh food catering to your every whim, sundowner cruises, bush dinners under the Milky Way, in-room spa treatments, the Selous Bar and a library of fascinating reads, you probably won’t be too interested in the complimentary WiFi connectivity, cellphone reception and conference facilities available, but it’s reassuring to know that they are there if you need them. What is certain as you settle into the Zambezi way of life is that you will find yourself wondering why you booked to stay in Paradise for so few nights…. n Mark Porter

Lower Zambezi valley, ZamBia telephone: +27 (0)33 342 7498 Cellular: +27 (0)82 806 4074 email: info@bainesrivercamp.com Website: www.bainesrivercamp.com Baines’ River Camp is a member of the mantis Collection. it is just a 35-minute flight from Lusaka international airport to the Royal Zambezi airstrip, just 9km from camp. there are daily flights into Lusaka from Johannesburg (2 hours) and other regional airports. Direct flights between London and Lusaka are available three times a week.

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Palazzo Montecasino ∙ South Africa

Immersed in Renaissance splendour Entrancing water features, magnificent porticos and elegant arches are the setting for an urban getaway with a dreamlike grandeur that spirits one away to a long ago age of dukedoms and palaces in 16th-century Tuscany. The five-star service perpetuates the illusion with princely pampering second to none.

T

o stay in the Palazzo Montecasino is to step into an alternative, grander reality. You could be visiting a Medici duke at the height of the Italian Renaissance or be a guest of a 17thcentury Pope in his palatial country villa in the hills outside Rome. You certainly don’t feel that you are in an upmarket suburb of Johannesburg, conveniently close to the Sandton business district, with the Montecasino entertainment complex right on the doorstep.

The splendour of the facade with its pillared porticos, arched windows and balustrading, surrounded by meticulously laid-out formal Italianate gardens, leads new arrivals to expect a certain grandeur inside, and they are in no way disappointed with what they find.

Dazzling chandeliers catch the eye in the lobby and sweeping double staircases in the best palace tradition lead the eye upwards to a painted cupola ceiling.

Tall arched windows at the back of the

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Upstairs rooms and suites enjoy fabulous vistas over the terraced gardens, koi pond and swimming pool to the expansive grounds beyond.

hotel reveal a fabulous vista that makes you forget that you are in the middle of a busy city. Immaculate formal gardens with a koi fish pond at their centre descend in terraces to the swimming pool, and then down again to expansive park grounds of spreading grass and trees, a design for landscaping straight from the Palladian villas of Italy.

When it comes to furnishings however, don’t expect centuries-old antiques from the original Renaissance palaces.

Here you’ll find no faded tapestries and ancient marquetry. Instead, there is an opulence inspired by old-world style but with thoroughly up-to-date levels of comfort – exactly what a Renaissance prince would demand were he to live in the modern age.

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A deluxe bedroom is the perfect setting for old-fashioned romance with its doublevolume ceilings, dark wood furniture, separate sitting area and French doors opening on to a private terrace, where a leisurely breakfast can be enjoyed in the fresh air looking out over the gardens.

The dedicated staff comes up trumps for anniversaries and special occasions, laying on rose petals at turn down, sparkling wine on ice and other thoughtful touches to lift an evening way above the ordinary. It’s these small but telling gestures that make guests feel like royalty: from a check-in greeting with cool drinks in summer and hot chocolate in winter, through spontaneous breakfast baskets packed for guests with an early start and complimentary bottles of water

PhotograPhs: Palazzo Montecasino

every night at turn down, to a friendly and helpful concierge service on hand for any request.

A peek at the magnificent penthouse that takes up the entire top floor of the main palazzo gives a glimpse of an even higher level of luxury: sumptuous brocades, indulgent furnishings, stuccoed ceilings and endless space – 400 square metres overall. There are three bedrooms with en suite bathrooms, a private dining room, private bar, lounge and study with a domed painted ceiling the centrepiece – and of course fabulous views over the grounds and beyond.

Swimming pools may not have been a major feature of Italian palaces several centuries ago – court ladies would have had to content themselves with secret grottoes and hidden pools where they could bathe in privacy – but the Palazzo is less concerned with authenticity than with creating a suitably lavish ambience, and that includes a large pool on the lower terrace, where guests can relax on sun loungers, enjoy cocktails or a light meal and relax even further with a skillful massage from a Thai therapist in the adjoining gazebos.

For delicious Italian-inspired cuisine, head to the Medeo restaurant where, if the weather’s fine, you can dine al

fresco on the terrace. The dinner menu changes with the seasons to ensure the focus is always on the freshest local ingredients. Breakfast, too, would do a Grand Duke proud. Along with a selection of cooked favourites, there’s a selection of fresh Italian breads, Italian cold meats, berries and fruits – all enjoyed with a glass of sparkling wine.

There are, of course, endless entertainment possibilities in Montecasino, connected to the Palazzo hotel by an open-air walkway, where the illusion of visiting a hilltop Tuscan town is prolonged. The 40 restaurants, casino, cinemas, theatres and shops are all designed in a realistic version of Tuscany’s unmistakable vernacular – clock towers, red-tiled roofs, arcades and all. If after an evening’s entertainment, the return journey seems too much, a hotel golf cart whisks you home in no time.

The Palazzo Montecasino, which unsurprisingly has been South African winner of the World Luxury Hotel Awards for four consecutive years, is such a wonderful escape from the stresses of everyday life that it’s no wonder both local and international guests come for a unique getaway – suspending reality for a while, to be treated like princes in this gorgeous reconstruction of Renaissance splendour. n Kit Heathcock

Palazzo Montecasino

Fourways, sandton, Johannesburg, sa telephone: +27 (0)11 510 3000 email: palazzo.reservations @tsogosun.com Website: www.tsogosunhotels.com/ deluxe/the-palazzo-montecasino the hotel forms part of the lavish Montecasino entertainment complex.

The décor throughout combines Renaissance opulence with contemporary comfort to create a harmonious and supremely indulgent ambience.

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singh&sons PON/3158/OPULENT/E

Enjoy Responsibly. Not for Sale to Persons Under the Age of 18.

SEIZE THE MOMENT Pongr‡ cz MŽ thode Cap Classique is inspired by Desiderius Pongr‡ cz, the man whose tenacity and wit served as our inspiration and whose lifeÕ s work made it all possible.

Enjoy Responsibly. Not for Sale to Persons Under the Age of 18.

LUX* Maldives

Island surprise

Unspoiled white beaches that give on to azure blue waters alive with colourful coral reefs; thousands of small islands heady with the scent of fragrant tropical blooms – the Maldives offers an island escape unlike any other. And there's no better place to enjoy its delights than at this exclusive resort, where the trademark LUX* collection of 50 experiences guaranteed to delight offers a light-hearted and eco-friendly surprise around every corner, from coloured beanbags scattered along the beach to wriggly recyclers that quietly munch away all waste.

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In the Beach Pool Villas, a spacious bathroom spills out into a secluded garden with private plunge pool.

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W

The Water Villas are suspended on stilts directly over the Indian Ocean, offering endless sea views and direct access to the beach – where you'll find the Allegria Restaurant and Bar (above), popular for its vibrant Italian fare.

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hether you’re a seasoned traveller, or island virgin, the Maldives is always a surprise.

In among all that sparkling sea, can there really be more than a thousand islands?

Are there truly beaches of powder white sands, and coral-fringed lagoons where aquatic wonderlands await beneath the surface? Surely there aren’t fine-dining restaurants and luxurious spas?

It seems almost impossible, but then that’s the magic of the Maldives: there’s a surprise around every sandy corner.

As your seaplane drifts down through the clouds, the curtain rises, the actors arrive on their watery stage and you feel almost compelled to break into applause. Instead, it’s the sound of the seaplane’s floats hissing along the water that greets what could be the performance you’ve been waiting your whole life to experience.

Because if all the world’s a stage, then the spotlight is firmly on Dhidhoofinolhu.

This island in the idyllic South Ari Atoll is one of the largest in the archipelago, yet one of the most exclusive: home only to LUX* Maldives.

True to the LUX* ethos of “*Lighter.

Brighter.”, there’s a fresh modern aesthetic running throughout this island paradise.

Old and dowdy are out, vibrant and sophisticated are in. And perhaps nowhere is this more evident than the luxurious suites scattered across sand and sea.

Beach Pavilions and Villas are ideal for travellers with young children, or those who prefer a foot on terra firma, but escape artists in search of Robinson Crusoe romance will fall in love with the Water Villas. In these spacious suites perched on stilts over iridescent blue waters, the hues of sea, sand and sky caress the stylish decor like the falling tide.

With the sparkling ocean dominating the horizon, textures of rattan, wood and palm fronds add an organic edge to the

PhotograPhs: LUX* IsLaND rEsorts

metropolitan touches of fine linen and modern conveniences. You might be on the other side of the world, but you’re also on the end of a Wi-Fi connection.

Privacy is paramount here too, and rooms over both sand and sea offer quiet retreats to reconnect with loved ones.

And nothing connects us quite like food.

We connect with each other across a shared table, and to a place through its produce and traditions. LUX* Maldives offers nearly a dozen different opportunities to indulge; from a taste of authentic Indian Ocean cuisine at East, to stylish Japanese teppanyaki in Umami. For less adventurous palates, The Island Kitchen and Allegria Restaurant serve up worldclass international cuisine.

But the surprises don’t end once you leave the table. The entire island is a smörgåsbord of the unexpected, and LUX* excels at adding a theatrical playfulness to your escape. Giant hammocks – a LUX* trademark – swing lazily in the tropical breeze, ready to ambush you between the palm trees, while outdoor libraries tempt you to linger just a while longer.

As a blanket of stars covers the island, seek out the mobile observatory, where a powerful telescope and knowledgeable guides will whisk you through the Milky Way. Those bikini-clad beachgoers aren’t the only heavenly bodies on offer!

And just when the tropical heat leaves you feeling thirsty, or a nightcap calls your name, a private honesty bar appears – stocked with ice-cold beers and the makings of your favourite cocktail.

And that bright-red English phone box in the tropics? That’s a complimentary phone, to call loved ones back home. Just don’t ring the office. Promise?

And there are just as many surprises waiting for you beneath the waters that surround Dhidhoofinolhu. The Maldives offers world-class scuba diving, but even snorkellers can glimpse the magical undersea world on daily reef tours. There’s also the excitement of kayaking, kite surfing, and waterskiing to enjoy, too.

Of course it’s not a beach holiday without ice cream, so the retro-styled LUX* icecream vendors trundle their carts around

Whether suspended over the water or scattered along the beach, the spacious LUX* suites are light and breezy, blending vibrant island colours with tranquil organic tones.

the island scooping out fresh flavours into biodegradable punnets.

Because eco-friendly is more than a buzzword at LUX*, it’s ingrained in everything that happens. Waste is recycled, water is desalinated and herbs are picked fresh from the island’s own gardens. While much of the resort’s waste is recycled, a battery of worm farms takes care of the rest. It’s all about treading lightly on these tropical sands.

And in a precious piece of paradise that rises just metres above sea level, it’s good to know that offsets ensure your stay is 100 per cent carbon neutral. It’s the LUX* approach to clean, fresh island living.

It’s simple, yet comes as a pleasant surprise... not unlike the Maldives itself.

And as you dig your toes deeper into the coral sand, drinking in the ochre rays of the setting sun, you’ll smile quietly to yourself as this theatre of dreams makes them all come true. n Richard Holmes

LUX* Maldives

Dhidhoofinolhu Island, south ari atoll, MaLDIVEs telephone: +960 668 0901 Email: luxmaldives@ luxislandresorts.com Website: www.luxisland resorts.com

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an alchemy of metal and paint

Father and son, Anton and Lionel Smit, share a passion for metal and the human form.

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Father and son, sculptor Anton Smit and artist Lionel Smit, take time off after the 2012 Summer Charity Auction, hosted in Cape Town, to share personal insights into their work.

PHOTOGrAPHS: FIOnA MACPHErSOn, SuPPLIED

by Alexandra Dodd

There's a decidedly upbeat note in Lionel Smit’s industrial-scale studio in Strand the morning after the 2012 Summer Charity Auction. Lionel and his father, the sculptor, Anton Smit, are mulling over the evening’s highlights over a second pot of Java blend.

Both their works realised knockout prices at the candlelit auction, hosted by Opulent Living Magazine and The Carla Antoni Collection in the sculptural new Bantry Bay home of master architect Stefan Antoni and his family.

The double-volume warehouse walls of Lionel’s studio are adorned with several of his vast, instantly recognisable portraits in various states of completion, and a scattered assembly of bronze sculptures on plinths punctuates the bleached factory interior with flights of bold expressivity. Everything seems to have grown larger in here – more epic and spacious. The painting studio leads upstairs to a gallery space and flows across a courtyard to a second warehouse in which Lionel makes his sculptural pieces. There's an immediate sense of expansiveness here, a shift in scale and spatiality that is common to the works of father and son, both of whom occupy large studio spaces and make work that is tall, wide and awe-inspiring in scale.

As the the camera team sets up to tape the interview and photo shoot for a behind-thescenes video for the Opulent Living website, the banter flows freely between the artists.

“My father always used to say: the bigger your space is, the bigger your paintings will start becoming,” jokes Anton, looking around his

son’s studio. Lionel‘s close-up portraits take up entire walls and amplify the emotional language at play in a series of strikingly distinctive, mostly female faces. The eyes of his sitters often seem dreamily focused on some object beyond their immediate field of vision, lost in a quiet reverie of thought, memory, longing…

But perhaps even stronger than the psychological magnetism of the portrait is the bold expressivity of his brushstrokes. Deriving inspiration from the American action painters of the 1940s, Lionel throws himself into the physical act of painting, so dripping paint and fevered patches of deep charcoal shading take on the alluring looseness of a study or sketch.

Earthy skin tones combine with deep Delft blues and swathes of absorbing grey, which are broken by lashings of vital red, spatters of turquoise, or patches of deep rose pink that escape the limits of the face itself.

His paintings share their monumental scale and presence with Anton’s sculptures, which have been exhibited and collected both locally and abroad for about two decades.

Great bronze figures that stretch upwards towards the heavens, Anton’s creations have a powerful spiritual or mythological dimension, seeming to have emerged from the otherworldliness of dream or legend.

Has this shared sense of epic scale emerged from some aspect of their familial line or ancestral history? Anton’s response is decisive: “It comes from nowhere,” he says.

“When we go back along the family tree, we

Jeweller and art collector Laurence Graff, a big supporter of works by both father and son, features in this oil portrait by Lionel.

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Anton's Kungwini Head is also available in a size that's five metres high – typical of the awe-inspiring scale he employs in his work. Lionel's up-close portraits, with their distinctive charcoal patches and swathes of deep blue and red, are just as expansive.

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only find farmers and policemen. Lionel and I are the first recorded artists in our family history.” And the two men break into laughter.

“It’s just me,” explains Anton. “I was born a little crazy, I guess. I just said, 'no normal life for me. I have to do something extraordinary.‘ It is such a God-given opportunity to be alive.

So I said to myself, 'Okay, I’m going to go for it – I’m going to go big or go home.‘” “And we’re not going home,” declares Lionel, playfully punching the shoulder of his father and mentor, offering us a glimpse of the leonine spirit that earned him his name.

Anton first discovered art at the age of 16 in a book about Michelangelo that he happened to stumble upon on his father’s bookshelf. When he discovered that Michelangelo was actually a human being and not “an angel who came down from heaven and made these things out of marble”, he decided that he wanted to be an artist too. “My dad said: 'Go and see a psychiatrist. Stop this nonsense now.‘” When his father realised that this wasn’t just a phase and that his blue-eyed boy wasn’t

going to become a policeman like he was, he responded in rage. ”I had a little studio in the garage and my father actually broke my first sculptures,“ recalls Anton. ”He’d come in and smash everything. So I realised it was serious and I moved out soon afterwards.“ He started teaching himself about art by reading books in the local library and slept on a mattress under the table in the pottery where he worked. “I think I sold my first sculpture for R50 and then just kept on going and going,“ he says. ”I was absolutely determined.“ Slowly but surely, he built himself into a sculptor of local and international standing, and in 2003, he launched the Anton Smit Sculpture Park, a three-hectare property on a plateau overlooking the Bronkhorstspruit Dam in Gauteng. Against a backdrop of natural quartzite formations, the rolling lawns and succulent gardens are the ideal environment in which to appreciate his monumental sculptural installations.

“Not being able to go to art school or get any formal training was difficult for me. It was a bit of struggle to get the technique and everything right,” confesses Anton, reflecting on his past. “But the first thing Lionel made was right. So, in some way, the genes must have mutated and become real in him.”

He tells the story of how, when Lionel was a boy of about 15, he sent him off with a lump of clay and instructions to make a heart of out of hands. ”Lionel went off to his bedroom and locked the door, and he came back a couple of hours later with a perfect heart made out of two hands folded into one another, and he said: ‘Is this what you mean?’ Imagine my surprise when he came back with that.”

Lionel studied art at Pretoria’s Pro Arte art school, but says most of his learning came from being around his dad’s studio while he was growing up. “My dad never came to me and said: ’Right, now I’m going to teach you about Picasso’,“ he says. “The atmosphere was just all over. Our house was always very vibrant – there was never a dull moment. At any given moment, there was always an artist living with us.

“One day there was this weird guy in our garden and, when I mentioned it to my dad, he told me that the authorities at Weskoppies [the psychiatric hospital] had told him that this guy was talking to the plants and stuff.

So my dad just said: ‘Okay, then he can talk to the plants in my garden instead,’ and he bailed him out and brought him home to get him off the drugs and get his head straight.”

“Ja, so Lionel got exposed to all that,” says Anton, chuckling. “He was educated in a very spongey way.”

“But the best thing were the art students.

There were often students from the art school doing apprenticeships and things, so I would become friends with them and sit in on their life drawing sessions with them.”

“To this day, he is still friends with Jan Otto du Plessis of Bronze Age, who have just moved to the new Woodstock Foundry… Jan Otto was like my son,” adds Anton.

But having a father who is such a well-loved artist hasn’t always been simple for Lionel.

“When I was starting out, a part of me was trying to run away from being ‘the sculptor, Anton Smit’s son’. I will always be connected to my father, but I really wanted to be my own person,” he says quietly. “That might be part of why I started going into painting more. It intrigued me and it was something that I could discover on my own, something that wasn’t part of my father’s world.”

But he is quick to acknowledge that his father’s support has been a huge help in opening the right doors that have led to the excellent reception his work is receiving from local and European galleries and buyers.

Although the two never work together, respecting each other’s creative space, Anton and Lionel have exhibited together, and it was at their landmark joint show, Relate, at Grande Provence in 2009, that Anton introduced Lionel to Lawrence Graff, owner of Delaire Graff Estate and one of the world’s most respected and successful diamond dealers and jewellers.

One of the biggest art collectors in the world, Graff invited Lionel to contribute one of his paintings to be auctioned at Christie’s in London during London Frieze week in October 2009. The auction was presented by members of the FACET Foundation charity as well as supermodel Naomi Campbell and actor Matt Damon, and other artists included Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons.

Lionel attended with his wife Vasti (also a painter) and says the event stands out as the highlight of his career so far. “There we

were sitting in a Christie’s auction in London amongst the who’s who of the art world. It was surreal. I felt like I was in a movie,” he says. His painting, African Girl, an oil on canvas that is taller than he is, adorned the cover of the auction catalogue and sold for a sweet £26 000.

“But you need to be very patient to be an artist,” he says, bringing things back down to earth again, and you get the sense that he is quite a grounded, clear-thinking person.

“I’ve been painting for 12 years and it has taken me all that time to get to this point.

You’ve got to keep on keeping on. And that’s the hard thing to do.”

At this point, Anton takes his cue: “Lionel

paved his own road. I always told him: 'Don’t worry about anything else – just make great art.’ And that’s what he did. And he’s become very successful because of that. I always knew he could do it.”

And then, after a reflective pause: “I suppose the pendulum swung the other way with me. Because I wish my father was a bit more involved or in any way interested in what I do, I sometimes try to influence Lionel too much. I’m secretly very interested in what he is doing.” In truth, he can hardly contain his almost boyish excitement at the way things are unfolding for his son. And considering his own remarkable journey, who can blame him?

Anton is such a turbo-charged, once-off

both share a sense of epic scale

The Anton Smit Sculpture Park (above) fills three hectares on the northern side of the Bronkhorstspruit Dam in Gauteng.

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faces take up entire walls visionary kind of individual, it’s not at all hard to believe that he gets up at 4am every morning to start dreaming up his next creation, and that he zooms around his vast studio on a scooter, moving between the 20 employees who work with him to realise his monumental sculptures. Art seems to pump in his very veins and it’s been the vehicle through which has realised his boyhood dreams. Luckily, he has been blessed with a son who understands, through personal immersion in the alchemy of metal and paint, what that really means to him.

As for Lionel, he is quick to acknowledge the doors that have opened for him as well as the support and advice his father has given him over the years. “Things just happen around my father,“ he says, “but I think the biggest gift he has ever given me is freedom.”

Anton Smit was born in the town of Boksburg, just outside of Johannesburg, in 1954. Completely self-taught, he entered his first sculpting competition at the age of 16 and scooped first prize. Since then, Smit’s work has been exhibited and collected locally and internationally. His international breakthrough came in the form of two exhibitions in Rome and Milan in 1990, and has continued to unfold since then. His sculptures depict the human form reduced to a simplified symmetry, almost cleansed of everything but form itself. His latest project is the three-hectare Anton Smit Sculpture Park in Bronkhorstspruit, a unique creative destination that attracts tourists and art buyers alike.

Born in Pretoria in 1982, Lionel Smit is known for his vast, expressive oil-on-canvas portraits featuring close-ups of the human face. He has been exploring the sculptural qualities of painting and vice versa since the age of 16 when his parents separated and he began working in the large studio space vacated by his father, Anton. Embracing painting out of a desire to establish his own artistic signature, his popularity has grown on a global scale, a highlight being the use of one of his images on the cover of a Christie’s auction catalogue in London. Collectors of his work include Laurence Graff of Delaire Graff Estate and Rand Merchant Private Bank.

To see our behind-the-scenes video go to www.opulentliving.co.za

The sheer scale of Lionel's larger than life paintings and sculptures is apparent in his warehouse studio (left) in Strand, Cape Town.

Siren (above) is a relatively small oil on canvas at just 80 x 80cm.

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Grande Roche Hotel ∙ South Africa

Grande dame of the Winelands When your soul cries out for respite from the pressures of daily life, this pearl in the Cape Winelands feels tailor-made to recharge and refresh. A seamless combination of heritage, rusticity and first-world creature comforts, the Grande Roche Hotel provides an idyllic oasis that will tempt you back again and again‌

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T

he trappings of city life, especially cellphones and laptops, have no place at the Grande Roche Hotel.

It would take a prolonged sojourn indeed for your attention to be distracted away from the Edenic natural surroundings, and once nature’s healing magic takes hold, any vestiges of real-world stress melt away. You might even find yourself pausing to “smell the roses” in the extravagant garden that welcomes you to this centuries-old manor.

Perched gracefully on the slopes of Paarl Mountain in the heart of the valley, the Grande Roche Hotel is surrounded by 360-degree panoramas that will leave even the most jaded of travellers transfixed. The manor, an excellent example of the Cape Dutch architecture peculiar to this region, was built in 1707 by the Bosman family and lies at the centre of this working wine farm. All the outbuildings – stables, tack rooms, a granary and cellar – have been sensitively converted into 28 suites, studios and terrace cottages.

This effortless sequence of residences lies resplendent among plentifully planted gardens. Kumquat, lemon and crab-apple trees rise above beds of culinary and medicinal herbs, local shrubs and flowers, so that you feel a marvellous sense of growth and abundance all around you.

Whether you’re lingering over lunch on the vine-facing terrace or rambling through the grounds, your senses will be

gratified by wafts of heady fragrances, soothing colours and the chamber music of water, wind and birdsong. You might even be inspired to haul out your laptop – not to communicate with the outside world, but rather to compose a pastoral ode. Or maybe you’ll ditch your camera for paper and watercolours to capture nature’s splendour, like generations of local artists before you.

Each of the 28 suites boasts all of those deluxe touches you’d expect from this calibre of hotel: state-of-the-art media facilities, plush bathrooms and sumptuous sleeping quarters. But it is the breathtaking views from your terrace – where you can take breakfast, or lounge in the afternoon sun – that sets the Grande Roche Hotel apart and makes it the unashamedly fivestar destination that it is.

This luxurious accommodation is augmented by an admirably full roster of leisure facilities. The 14-metre-long swimming pool is conveniently situated next to the gym and spa, where you can enjoy relaxing and rejuvenating massages. And, of course, early morning turns around the grounds of the estate come highly recommended.

Mealtimes at the Grande Roche Hotel add another layer to the sensory spectrum of experiences. Whether you choose Bosman’s for fine-dining, or the chic, charming and super cute Bistro Allegro for sophisticated café-style fare, the

The stately manor is a Cape Dutch gem. Inside is the intimate Bosman’s Restaurant (right), where culinary maestro Roland Gorgosilich delights diners with imaginative cuisine.

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Paarl Rock looms majestically over the vines of this working wine farm, where guest cottages can be found scattered among the lush abundance of the gardens and vineyards.

The elegant rooms display a pared-down modernity that compliments the integrity of the heritage architecture.

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PHOTOGRAPHS: GRAndE ROCHE HOTEl

The secluded pool pavilion is perfect for long, lazy summer afternoons, while breakfast is a lavish affair with baskets of freshly baked pastries and breads.

innovative menus from Michelin-trained Austrian chef, Roland Gorgosilich, will blow you away.

He dazzles with a six course dégustation that rivals many of Cape Town’s finedining destinations – and elevates familiar local ingredients with distinction.

A simple butternut broth, infused with lemongrass and ginger and garnished with yellowtail spring rolls, becomes extraordinary, while set pieces such as kingklip and prawns are as delicate and distinctive as one could wish for.

The fish course comes napped in a bouillabaisse foam that is as essential and oceany as that complex dish promises. The authentic Vienna schnitzel, inspired by the chef’s native Austria, is a Bistro favourite, – and don’t leave without sampling the chocolate fondant and homemade vanilla-pod ice-cream.

As for the freshly brewed coffee and

petits-fours – or homemade raspberry jellies, fresh coconut marshmallows and plus-perfect pralines – they’re sublime and memorable!

The attentive staff at the Grande Roche Hotel deserves special mention.

Their passion, down-to-earth hospitality and enthusiastic professionalism are embodied by events coordinator Onwaba Maholwana and restaurant supervisor Tom Droth, whose amiable and informed bonhomie is everything you could wish for in a maître d’hôtel.

It’s this level of old-world care and personal pride that makes the Grande Roche Hotel not just another five-star establishment. Onwaba points out that all returning guests are automatically elevated to VIP status. While Tom hastens to add that 75 percent of Grande Roche Hotel guests are returnees. Who can blame them? n Nikki Benatar

Grande Roche Hotel

Paarl, Western Cape, SA Telephone: +27 (O)21 863 5100 Email: reserve@granderoche.co.za Website: www.granderoche.co.za

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LUX* Belle Mare ∙ Mauritius

A light-hearted production of an island dream Impromptu, playful, fresh – three words to describe a LUX* holiday performance, staged to capture the authentic energy of island life. Whether it's a pop-up coconut stall or a night-time outing to track a shooting star, a LUX* holiday promises to transport you away from the routine of everyday life. And where better to land than on the beautiful east coast of Ile Maurice, where coral-proteced lagoons embrace palm-fringed beaches…

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The large pool at LUX* Belle Mare provides the perfect spot to relax, as do the beautiful villas, where UK-based interior designer Kelly Hoppen has introduced soothing neutrals to instil the feeling of sanctuary.

The warm waters of the Indian Ocean are just steps from your luxurious suite, and a wide sandy beach protected by a calm, coral lagoon makes the resort an ideal choice for families.

Y

ou’ll never forget Mauritius.

From the moment you arrive, you’ll feel as if you’ve finally found “it”; that place where your shoulders lighten and your spirits soar.

Perhaps it’s the soft tropical air that wraps you in a warm embrace as you leave the airport, the rustle of palm trees applauding your welcome. Or maybe it’s the colours of the island; radiant hues that will be etched into your memory like light striking photographic film.

Hues like the iridescent green of lush hillsides, forged by ancient volcanoes then left to weather in the tropical rain.

At the foot of these plunging hills lies an ocean of luminescent blue. A bottle of Bombay Sapphire would look dull set against the sparkling waters of the Indian Ocean as it laps the east coast of Ile Maurice; whispering sweet nothings as

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the sun rises on another day in paradise.

Like a mirror to the vibrant ocean lies LUX* Belle Mare: brimming with Creole charm and waiting with open arms to turn your island holiday into the performance of a lifetime. Until the curtain falls on your last day in paradise, LUX* Belle Mare ensures every moment is a mental snapshot for an album titled ‘Unforgettable’.

And it starts from the moment you walk into LUX* Belle Mare’s spacious lobby.

The ocean seems close enough to touch, and you can feel the stress of city living evaporate. The air smells sweeter here, as if the stage has been set amidst jasmine, vanilla and soft sea air. In the wings, a coterie of helpful staff is on hand to make your dreams come true.

But where to first, you ask yourself?

Start by getting a feel for your role in

this production in paradise, and at LUX* the luxurious suites and villas are your home from home. The resort boasts 174 suites scattered around the lush tropical gardens, while 12 exclusive villas offer private swimming pools and gardens, outdoor dining areas and butler service.

Wherever you choose to lay your head, there’s a calming minimalism in the décor. Recently rejuvenated by renowned international interior decorator, Kelly Hoppen, her trademark muted tones are brought to life with occasional dashes of vibrant colour, reminding you that these are passionate islands, where joie de vivre comes standard. Four-poster beds with the trademark LUX* Sleep Tight mattress ensure you’ll rest well, lulled by the sound of the sea on your doorstep.

At the seafront, spacious Lagoon Suites offer exquisite views of the coral-fringed

waters that shelter the white sands of the beach. A hot tub and ice-cold bubbly make this the perfect place to celebrate new romances, and rekindle old ones.

There’s romance for honeymooners, but privacy and peace for families too: interconnected suites offer parents a touch of personal space, while also gifting families the chance to enjoy special moments together. For an added touch of indulgence, a butler is available to see to your family’s every need.

Holding court over them all though is the large Maharajah Suite. Mauritius has a rich Indian heritage that is celebrated in the bountiful furnishings and delicate artworks that lend a sense of opulent escapism to this worldclass accommodation. A smaller interconnecting suite allows you to share this idyll with family and friends. With

a private dining room, round-the-clock butler service and a private rooftop terrace, you’d be hard-pressed to leave this cradle of luxury.

Which would be a shame, of course, because LUX* Belle Mare has so much to offer beyond the embrace of your suite.

As the name suggests, the “beautiful sea” that lies metres from your bed is one of the highlights of your stay, and the friendly LUX* staff are on hand throughout the day to help you make the most of it.

A range of complimentary water sports includes kayaking, sailing and waterskiing, while the deep blue beckons many with deep-sea fishing and scuba diving.

The resort’s five-star PADI dive centre caters for experienced bubble-blowers and beginners alike, and there are a host of world-class dive sites just a short boat ride from the resort.

Quirky, guest-focused details, such as this red phone booth that allows you to make free international calls, are a feature of all LUX* resorts.

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The spacious Ocean and Beachfront Villas at Belle Mare offer perfect privacy, with dedicated plunge pools and secluded gardens.

Butler service completes the package.

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To wash off the salt, take a dive into the other big blue at LUX* Belle Mare; the resort swimming pool that – at 2 000 square metres – is one of the largest on the island and takes centre stage here.

If you’d rather be on the green, you’ve come to the right place too. Mauritius boasts a fabulous range of fairways, and three 18-hole championship courses are minutes away.

Even without leaving the resort there’s plenty to keep you occupied; try your hand at a round of pétanques or keep an eye out for the next game of beach volleyball happening down on the sands. And while you’re enjoying your downtime, younger travellers can be kept busy at PLAY and Studio 17. These well-equipped facilities cater for children aged 3-12 and 12-17, keeping kids, tweens and teens happily entertained until late in the evening.

But if the family is down at the pool or

To have arrived...

Words that describe achieving the pinnacle of success.

We always gravitate towards being better at what we do and achieving more than we already have.

At Seeff we have done the same throughout our 48 year history: we have grown and evolved. Yet, we strive to do better for our clients still.

That’s why we now offer you the Seeff Select Portfolio: not for those who claim they have arrived, but for those who are merely continuing life’s journey to even greater heights.

The above homes are from the Seeff Select Portfolio.

View it at seeff.com

SELECT Samuel Seeff - Chairman

lazing on the beach, remember to keep an eye out for the retro-styled ice-cream vendors that dish up fresh low-fat ice cream overflowing with luscious fruits from the island. Pineapple and chilli anyone? It’s just another way LUX* makes island holidays brighter for kids young and old.

Because holidays are all about “me-time”; finding the space to rest and recharge before heading back to the hurly-burly of the everyday world. And at LUX* Belle Mare that space is the LUX* ME spa; your island sanctuary.

There’s an extensive menu of facials, massages and scrubs, or simply allow the dedicated spa concierge to devise a bespoke wellness programme for you.

LUX* is also thinking outside the box with its innovative Spa Privé which provides all you need – from Shirley Page essential oils to helpful tips – for a relaxing spa experience in the privacy of your suite. It’s all about taking some metime on your own terms.

This range of options to suit every traveller – young, old, active, relaxing

– extends to the world-class cuisine at LUX* Belle Mare. Families will find a buffet bar none at The Kitchen, and the host of family friendly restaurants make this an ideal resort for those with young travellers in tow. However, even family travellers should create the space to experience two of the finest restaurants on the island.

With its wonderful lagoon views, Indouchine pays homage to the exotic blend of cultures that have lent their cuisine to Mauritius: China, India, Thailand, Malaysia and Bali all add a delicate caress to a menu that blends island style with the spices of the Orient.

Le Langoustier adds a similarly innovative approach to the island’s bountiful seafood, blending fresh seasonal produce with fish, lobster and shellfish to create a memorable seafood experience.

But it doesn’t all have to be about indulgence. Every menu at LUX* features “Honestly Healthy” options, a new range of balanced vegetarian foods created by celebrity organic chef Natasha Corrett and nutritional therapist Vicki Edgson.

Lush gardens, sparkling waters and serene interiors – the stage is set for Mauritian magic.

However you choose to dine, don’t forget a side order of romance. Private dining – in your villa or down on the beach – is an unforgettable experience. As you sink your toes deeper into the sand, the sultry sunset bathing this sugar-sweet island in caramel light, waiters arrive with more champagne - and you’ll wonder why it took you so long to book this mesmerising island performance. n Richard Holmes

LUX* Belle Mare

PhoTogRAPhS: LUX* ISLAND RESoRTS

Belle Mare, MAURITIUS Telephone: +230 402 2000 Email: luxbellemare @luxislandresorts.com Website: www.luxislandresorts.com

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south africa's top chefs Photographs by Fiona Macpherson Text by Jocelyn Warrington

12 chefs. 12 dishes. The result? a shoot of gastronomic magic – specially produced by opulent Living Magazine.

PhoTograPh: greaTsTock

Proudly presented by

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PETER TEMPELHOFF The Greenhouse at The Cellars-Hohenort, Cape Town Impala carpaccio with purple figs, toasted hay Mont Blanc and cèpe glaze

“Progressive South African meets modern French,” is how Peter Tempelhoff, executive chef for The Collection by Liz McGrath, and Cape Town’s first Relais & Châteaux Grand Chef, describes his signature cuisine. It’s a cooking style that is evident at each of the six restaurants that Peter oversees in the group’s triumvirate of five-star hotels. And, it’s unmistakably present in the decadent impala carpaccio that he serves at flagship The Greenhouse in The Cellars-Hohenort.

“The dish uses the most South African of ingredients, marrying the distinctive taste of game meat with luxurious flavour partners like figs, chestnuts and cèpes. It’s a contemporary take on a true classic.”

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JACKIE CAMERON Hartford House, KwaZulu-Natal Midlands Ginger and lemon-infused koeksusters with butternut puree, melktart crème Anglaise, cinnamon spoom, ginger-nut crumble, cocoa sorbet and a cigar infused truffle spear

Jackie Cameron’s flair for showcasing the exceptional fresh and artisanal ingredients that have put the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands on the culinary map is at the heart of this chef’s meteoric rise through the food stratosphere.

As head of the kitchen at Hartford House, a position she’s held for nine years, Jackie draws inspiration from the boutique hotel’s magnificent surroundings, and cites the likes of Charlie Trotter, Thomas Keller and Ferran Adrià as cooking heroes. She describes her miniature koeksusters, drenched in ginger and lemon and served with silky butternut puree, melktert crème Anglaise, cinnamon spoom, ginger-nut crumble and cocoa sorbet, as “traditional boerekos at its opulent best.”

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CHRIS ERASMUS Pierneef à La Motte, La Motte, Franschhoek Porcini dusted venison loin with watermelon and amber barbecue sauce

“Right now I’m focusing on traditional Winelands cuisine; the recipes and styles of the Cape’s first settler cooks,” says Chris Erasmus of his current approach to the menu at La Motte’s award-winning restaurant, over which he presides. “Of course, I’m giving it modern reinterpretation, with the emphasis squarely on local, organically grown produce and natural sustainability.” Inspired by these culinary inclinations, Chris’s roast venison loin, which he serves with an innovative amber-hued watermelon sauce that is reduced over rosemary-infused charred oak, is a perennial pleaser: “From the succulent star-of-the-show warthog to the slab of natural granite on which it’s served, this dish is 100 percent homegrown.”

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CHRISTIAAN CAMPBELL Delaire Graff Restaurant at Delaire Graff Estate, Stellenbosch Slow cooked lamb neck with smoked tomato risotto, goat’s cheese and basil custard

“My challenge was to take conventional comfort food and give it a sumptuous twist,” explains executive chef Christiaan Campbell of the bistro-chic dish that has guests returning repeatedly to Delaire Graff’s eponymous restaurant. Trained at the elbow of gastronomic greats like Raymond Blanc and the Roux brothers, Christiaan’s unassailable culinary confidence is manifest in his choice of lamb neck as the meal’s lynchpin. “One automatically associates South African cuisine with game. I decided to defy custom by choosing a globally accessible domestic animal instead,” he says, adding, however, that the aromatic flavour of pasture-reared Karoo lamb does place this dish in a league of its own.

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CHANTEL DARTNALL Restaurant Mosaic at The Orient Hotel, Pretoria West Coast rock lobster and langoustine mousse with baby leeks and truffle cream

Combining her classical French training with a hedonist’s love of nature, Chantel Dartnall has carved out a niche for the particular style of “culinary botany” she practices at her famed Pretoria eatery. Inspired by the floral wonderland in which Restaurant Mosaic is located, and passionate about using organic and seasonal produce, the chef strives to effectively render “nature on a plate”. Her ensemble of indulgent West Coast rock lobster and langoustine mousse paired with baby leeks and rich truffle cream is dressed with sinuous plant tendrils and gossamer petals, proving her mantra that “food should appeal as much to the eye as it does to the palate”.

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MICHAEL BROUGHTON Terroir Restaurant at Kleine Zalze Estate, Stellenbosch Oven-roasted monkfish with parsley nage and potato gnocchi

“Classic pairings, intense flavours and the perfect sauce,” is Michael Broughton’s deceptively simple take on his constantly evolving menu at Terroir restaurant on Stellenbosch’s Kleine Zalze estate. In keeping with his vision to create “terroir-driven food” matched to the region’s wines, the provenance of ingredients is crucial and comes across powerfully in his oven-roasted monkfish, which he serves with potato gnocchi.

“Monkfish hails from cold West Coast waters and is among the most underrated of South African fish. I’ve gilded it in a crust of olives, garlic and burnt butter, and, for a decadent touch, teamed it with a parsley nage featuring sweet Saldanha Bay mussels.”

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RICHARD CARSTENS Tokara Restaurant at Tokara Wine Estate, Stellenbosch Duck liver parfait, beetroot streusel, hibiscus, almond crème, strawberries, pea sponge, golden plums and pistachio

Richard Carsten’s luxurious duck liver parfait is a star attraction at Tokara restaurant in Stellenbosch, where it is paired with the estate’s five year-old potstill brandy.

It perfectly embodies the respected chef’s forward-thinking Eastern-inspired culinary approach. A silken and rich yet impossibly light pâté made from the livers of locally reared ducks, the dish is served with a sweet beetroot streusel, almond crème, strawberries, pea sponge, golden plums and pistachios.

Showcasing Richard’s well-honed technical skill as well as his experimental playfulness, it was inspired, he says, by the Japanese aesthetic of Shibui Konomi: “An inherent appreciation of the elements, properly arranged and perfectly balanced”.

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tANJA kRUGER Makaron at Majeka House, Stellenbosch Study of pasture reared lamb with beetroot and mint sauce caviar

Thomas Keller, Gordon Ramsay and Marcus Weiring are just some of Tanja Kruger’s food idols. A former recipient of Gastronómica’s Chaîne des Rôtisseurs Young Chef award, the accomplished cook who heads up the kitchen at Majeka House in Stellenbosch is distinguished by her quirky take on classical French cuisine. Her signature pasture-reared lamb was conceived as a celebration of South African’s first-class produce and superbly demonstrates the delicious efficiency of the current obsession with top-to-tail dining.

Served alongside a lustrous beetroot puree and mint sauce caviar, it’s plated on a fragment of chiseled stone, calling to mind the sacred rock paintings of the country’s earliest inhabitants.

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JOHN JACKSON Royal Malewane, Greater Kruger National Park Rocket salade compsée of vanilla-marinated pineapple with queen prawns on avocado, sun-dried tomatoes and black peppercorn goat’s cheese

Intent on showcasing choice local ingredients by not overworking their presentation, John Jackson’s unique brand of safari-chic cuisine is what secured Royal Malewane the country’s first Chaîne des Rôtisseurs Blazon.

The founding chef of some of South Africa’s foremost dining establishments, Jackson brings his understated, yet impossibly elegant touch to the lodge’s signature salade composée, a cornucopia of tropical fruits, bushveld herbs and island spices. Pivoting on a centrepiece of plump Mozambiçan prawns enrobed in delicate kataifi pastry and assembled atop a tian of Lowveld avocado and vanilla-infused pineapple, it’s a dish whose subtle opulence admirably befits the regal African setting in which it is served.

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RUDI LIEBENBERG Planet Restaurant at The Mount Nelson Hotel, Cape Town Beetroot and honey glazed springbok with braised springbok polenta parcel, sautéed spinach and raw beetroot salad

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Rudi Liebenberg cites “respect” as key to his cooking style at Cape Town’s most distinguished luxury hotel: “The foundation of our food offering starts with respect… for the ingredient, for the process, for the end product and for the guest,” says the Mount Nelson’s gifted executive chef. Quintessentially South African, his beetroot and honey glazed springbok loin, which he teams with a braised neck polenta parcel, sautéed spinach and raw beetroot, epitomises his ambitious vision for the menu at the famous “Nellie”: “I want to give it a unique culinary identity – one that is informed by modern tastes but is rooted firmly in the hotel’s rich heritage”.

LUKE DALE-ROBERTS The Test Kitchen, Cape Town Shot pigeon

Experimental cuisine that packs a hefty flavour punch… the description only part defines the highly conceptual offering dished up by award-winning Luke Dale-Roberts. A type of gourmet laboratory, the open kitchen of his retro-urban restaurant in Cape Town’s Old Biscuit Mill provides epicurean adventurers with the kind of food theatrics that have become the trademark of this iconic chef.

Resembling a culinary catastrophe of sorts, his famous “shot pigeon”, cooked sous-vide, then pan-fried and drizzled in sage butter, lies in a pool of rich Burgundy sauce. Multisensory and avant-garde in the extreme, like all of Luke’s cutting-edge creations, it triggers something deeply visceral within its recipient.

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MARGOT JANSE The Tasting Room at Le Quartier Français, Franschhoek Beetroot sponge with spinach and onion puree, buttermilk labne and dill and cucumber granita

A committed disciple of the “less is more” school of thinking, Margot Janse’s distinctive culinary prowess repeatedly earns both her and The Tasting Room the food world’s most coveted accolades. In fact, the prestigious restaurant at Franschhoek's Le Quartier Français has been listed in the San Pellegrino 50 Best Restaurants every year for the past seven years – making her officially one of the country‘s foremost chefs. “Fine dining doesn’t have to be about foie gras and French Champagne,” asserts the Dutch-born Margot, who favours a pareddown approach concentrated on the clean flavours of a few key ingredients that are not unduly tampered with before their plating. Her minimalist crumbed beetroot sponge filled with spinach and onion puree and served on a ribbon of buttermilk labne with fresh cucumber granita on the side, exemplifies this stylishly focused approach.

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south AfricA's top chefs the mAkings of A portrAit series

Twelve South African chefs and their signature dishes were photographed especially for this edition of Opulent Living Magazine.

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Assembling 12 busy culinary heavyweights who hail from all corners of the country is no small task in anyone’s book. Having each whip up a picture-perfect gourmet meal befitting one of finest restaurants in the land, and then nonchalantly pose, chef’s knife gritted between teeth or live crayfish squirming in hand, for a quirky professional portrait is an achievement of an altogether higher order.

A celebration of the opulent, infinitely stylish food – and the creative minds behind

it – for which South Africa’s top restaurants have become justifiably famous: this was the target from the very beginning. How to select? Which chef to ask first? How to make sure to get a nice selection of dishes? Early hurdles on the way to the finish line.

Foodcorp, a leading South African manufacturer of branded food products, provided The 7th Floor, its state-of-the-art development kitchen and innovation centre in Cape Town, as a location for the ambitious project. The epitome of eco-savvy design, the sleek, contemporary space – an R8-million homage to the process of gastronomic invention – provided the requisite forwardthinking environment for the unhindered flow of creative juices needed to turn a concept of these grandiose proportions into reality.

With the chefs having been granted the peace of mind that a world-class facility of this calibre bestows, attention was duly turned to the transportation of the very particular ingredients required for their chosen dishes – an undertaking that would prove something more of a logistical challenge. Briefed to faithfully recreate – right down to exact garnishes and plating embellishments – the one dish on their menus that most perfectly embodies the inherent splendour of Africa’s haute cuisine offering at its luxurious best, the 12 chefs had gathered together a miscellany of season-specific produce indigenous to the locations of their particular restaurants, all of which now required careful cross-country ferrying.

The pre-made melktert crème Anglaise, cinnamon spoom and cocoa sorbet so integral to the indulgent ginger and lemon-drenched koeksuster dessert that Jackie Cameron serves at Hartford House, for example, made the journey from the lush Midlands of KwaZuluNatal to the Cape in a hand-held cooler box.

The 12 Chef Portraits are part of the Opulent Living Gallery – a selection of limited-edition, numbered and elegantly framed prints of original photographs commissioned for Opulent Living. These unique portraits, as well as other art motifs from the magazine, are available to purchase online at www.opulentliving.co.za.

Likewise, John Jackson had chosen an array of fresh ingredients native to the tropical foothills of the Klein Drakensberg in the country’s Limpopo province, where his restaurant at Royal Malewane has its home.

Wild bushveld aniseed, the distinctive buttery avocados of the Lowveld, artisanal pepperencrusted goat’s cheese from Tzaneen and a piquant pesto made from basil grown in the game lodge’s one-hectare herb garden all boarded the plane with the chef at Nelspruit’s Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport.

Chantel Dartnall, whose signature cuisine strives to simulate the botanical magnificence of the Crocodile River Valley in which her Restaurant Mosaic is situated, describes a hasty pre-flight foraging expedition to ensure optimal freshness of the ethereal baby pea tendrils and fennel flowers used to dress her lobster and langoustine mousse dish.

Michael Broughton good-humouredly recalls the hazards of driving one hand on steering wheel and the other stabilising a precious passenger-seat cargo of West Coast monkfish and Saldanha Bay mussels, while undertaking the voyage, albeit less of a distance, from his Terroir restaurant on the Kleine Zalze estate in the Cape Winelands.

Ingredients assembled, now began the meticulous task of crafting each high-art dish, ensuring the myriad elements of its composition would come together seamlessly for their moment of glory before the camera.

Armed with earbuds, tweezers and spritzing bottles, and working with the steady hands of a surgeon, a dedicated food stylist set about resuscitating toppling shards of the spun sugar garnish on Jackie’s dessert, boosting the shimmer of a glistening honey glaze on Rudi Liebenberg’s signature Mount Nelson springbok loin and staunching the thaw caused by the unforgiving photo-lamp

Top chefs had to get to grips with some unusual props as they posed for the camera

heat on the icy cucumber granita crafted

by Margot Janse of The Tasting Room at Le Quartier Français.

Photographer Fiona MacPherson provided the final ingredient in this complex recipe of artistic alchemy. “We chose Fiona for this Opulent Living project because we wanted something very different from usual food shots,” explains the magazine's Creative Director Florian Gast. “We wanted something more like art, with hard shadows and punctual

at Foodcorp's innovation centre, The 7th Floor.

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The polished sophistication of each finished food shot belies the elaborate orchestration of lights, mirrors and reflectors that went into its creation.

Visit the Opulent Living website www.opulentliving.co.za for a behind-the-scenes video of the shoot, additional images and fun out-takes, PLUS recipes for all 12 dishes featured.

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light. After all, we're not publishing a cook book. Fiona has a vast experience in fashion and is a magician with light – which is what made her perfect for this unique project.”

Choosing austere spot- and back-lighting and employing an elaborate system of mirrors, reflectors and diffusers, Fiona sought to create in each frame a taut balance of intense luminosity and stark shadow and, by so doing, imbue the components of each dish with a graphic, almost sculptural, feel – at once enhancing their appetite appeal while piquing a sense of visual curiosity.

It goes without saying that all the participant chefs were suitably impressed by the high drama conveyed to each shot through gutsy camera angles and moody lighting; Fiona’s uncanny ability to observe each element on the plate with a surrealist’s eye and to give to their composition the mystical allure of a lunar landscape. Indeed, as Rudi later remarked, “In the end, the photographer must take credit for doing the dish justice.”

Fiona's extensive experience in fashion and commercials was just as pivotal when it came time to snap the chef portraits – especially as each chef had been furnished with an ever more quirky item of kitchenalia as prop for the shot, carefully selected to suit his or her signature style.

So, we have Rudi looking fixedly into the camera, albeit with his face semi obscured by a large wedge of hubbard squash. Pierneef à La Motte’s Chris Erasmus, meanwhile, peers enquiringly through the hollow interior of a sizeable marrowbone (calling to mind an image of the Ancient Mariner with his trusty scope). Christiaan Campbell of Delaire Graff recalls the amusement of trying to manoeuvre four delicate quail eggs between the fingers of one hand: “I felt like I was discovering some new kind of yoga pose. Fortunately, the food

stylist had the foresight to hard-boil the eggs first or things could have become very messy.

In the end, we had to sacrifice only one egg.”

Tokara’s Richard Carstens, on the other hand, mastered the intricate workings of a pair of chopsticks and a tentacled squid with unflappable aplomb.

Makaron Restaurant’s Tanja Kruger describes the challenge set the hair stylist by the announcement that she’d be wearing a giant straining ladle in her dark tresses: “For someone who stands in front of a stove 24-7, having to sit still for a whole hour in order to have my hair and make-up done was no easy job. It took me right out of my comfort zone.”

John Jackson, too, admits to taking some strain in executing an instruction to feign admiring his painted reflection in an “extremely heavy” copper saucepan.

Peter Tempelhoff was also a bit hesitant about being asked “to talk” to a lobster and collapsed with laughter when a further instruction asked him “to bond” with it. But, in the end, bond they did. He even took the crustacean home. We wonder if he's still keeping it as a pet – or did it land up on a plate?

PHoToGRAPHS: FLoRIAn GAST

south AfricA's top chefs the mAkings of A portrAit series

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LUX* Ile de La Réunion

A treasure chest stashed between mountain and sea Whether you choose to brave the active volcano, paraglide from steep mountain peaks, mountain bike down forested gorges, scuba dive in crystal clear water or simply laze on coral sands, the French island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean offers unparalled treasures – not least of which is LUX* Ile de la Réunion and its signature LUX* checklist of 50 experiences guaranteed to surprise and delight holidaymakers.

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Réunion is an island of dramatic contrasts – and there's no better place to contemplate your many outdoor adventure options than poolside at the LUX* resort.

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ropical islands are all about hidden treasure: untold riches lying on sun-kissed shores, and travellers-in-the-know chancing upon the spot of their dreams.

Cast away in the sky-blue seas of the Indian Ocean, Ile de La Réunion was for centuries a hideout for treasure-hungry pirates: men who sought out the world’s riches and stashed them on the dark beaches of this dramatic volcanic island.

But that was then.

Today the true treasures of Réunion come not in sturdy wooden chests, but in the chic surrounds of the LUX* resort on the island’s west coast. Here, vanilla-scented air wafts through the manicured gardens

that provide an idyllic hideaway for travellers looking to rest and recharge.

And Blackbeard would have turned as green as the palm trees with envy at the stylish accommodation, where a hint of colonial elegance dances a sultry sega with irresistible island charm.

In the spacious rooms and suites, stylish ghost chairs stand effortlessly beneath beds awash in Creole colours; turquoise throws and elegant orchids an echo of the tropical paradise on the doorstep.

On your first night, relish the deep rest you’ll find on the Sleep Tight mattress that’s a signature of every LUX* resort.

The next morning, rested and refreshed, your holiday awaits.

Réunion is a far-flung island belonging to France, so to start with a café is de rigeur. Happily the Café LUX* serves coffee that would be fêted in the salons of Montmartre; their signature Island Blend of certified organic beans created by one of Africa’s top artisan roasters.

It’s just the beginning of the gourmet experience. La Cuisine is the gastronomic heart of LUX* Ile de La Réunion, with a globetrotting menu of island-inspired cuisine. Laid-back beachfront La Plage celebrates traditional Creole cuisine, with the likes of spicy rougail or red tuna tartar ready to tempt your taste buds.

If you’d prefer a little more privacy, that’s no problem either. Simply request

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The compact resort borders the l’Hermitage lagoon, where a colourful underwater world awaits snorkellers. After a day on its coral sands, enjoy the island's traditional Creole cuisine at beachfront La Plage.

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a gourmet picnic basket, toss a LUX* Sombrilla over your shoulder for some shade, and head off to find your own private idyll.

And like the island’s steep, forested slopes, LUX* likes to keep things green. Imported bottled water is eschewed in favour of fresh spring water that’s purified and bottled, keeping locals employed and Mother Nature smiling.

But don’t forget to create your own treasures along the way. Every guest receives a LUX* Journal, a bespoke diary in which to jot down special memories, and there are quirky and colourful photo shacks where you can print your holiday snaps – or send them to your Facebook account. And if the island experience inspires you, why not sign up for one of the regular painting, drawing or photography classes?

As the sun dips below the sea, it’s time to head for dinner at Orangine – an intimate

PhotograPhs: LUX* IsLaND rEsorts

Palm trees line the sweeping entrance to the gracious main building, while elegant suites sit among lush gardens that flow down to the beach and lagoon.

eatery combining Old World elegance with island sensuality. Think lobster carpaccio on local sugarcane, or spring rolls of freshly picked papaya. Of course, an impressive wine list offers both French and the New World vintages.

If you’re celebrating a special occasion, LUX* will create a magical dinner for two on the beach, or in a private corner of the lush gardens. Candlelight, stars and a private butler on hand… the perfect place for creating new engagements or celebrating lifelong romances. Or if you’d prefer to get passionate and party islandstyle, there’s a late-night entertainment excursion service that will guide you to the island’s hottest nightspots.

Red-hot romance is all the more fitting on Réunion: this is an island born of fire, and even today the Piton de la Fournaise, the dramatic volcano in the heart of the island, occasionally rumbles to life. It’s a dramatic landscape that will tear you

from your sun lounger at some point.

Whether it’s trekking in the national park, mountain biking through butterfly-filled forests or marvelling at the Piton from a sky-high helicopter adventure, Réunion has a reputation as the Indian Ocean’s top adventure destination.

Not that your island escape has to be all about adrenalin. LUX* is just a few steps from the L’Hermitage coral lagoon, and in the calm, clear waters you can quietly snorkel among the tropical fish, or kayak over them. Possibly just spreading out a towel on the sand is adventure enough? In the afternoon heat, perhaps pack the kids off to the PLAY club and book some metime at the spa, or find inner peace with a yoga session in the gardens.

As with every minute of your days at LUX* Ile de La Réunion, the choice is yours. Because here, on this treasure island, you create your own perfect. n Richard Holmes

LUX* Ile de La réunion

saint gilles Les Bains, rÉUNIoN telephone: +262 6270 0000 Email: luxiledelareunion @luxislandresorts.com Website: www.luxislandresorts.com

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Royal Chundu ∙ Zambia

A spot of pure gold Basking on the banks of the Zambezi, you lose all sense of time, and regain perspective. These are the things that count: a soothing splash from the infinity pool, the tinkling of ice in your tumbler, the shimmering gold of southern Africa’s most majestic river – all enjoyed from the deep shade of your daybed. Welcome to Royal Chundu.

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Enjoying a prime location on the magestic Zambezi, Royal Chundu's four Island Lodge villas offer space, privacy and luxury, surrounded by an untamed riverine wilderness.

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Once in your luxury riverside suite, you’ll want for nothing. The attention to detail, such as the antique silver tea and coffee sets, handpicked and unique to each room, is wonderful, as is the generosity of space.

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he Zambezi. The very name conjures up the river’s mesmerising power. No glossy, glass-smooth sheet of water this, but a rippling, roiling tide of water, moving inexorably towards its 100-metre plunge into the Batoka Gorge, where sky-high plumes of spray mushroom like cumulus clouds.

Victoria Falls, aptly baptised “The Smoke That Thunders”, is one of Africa’s greatest spectacles, but to appreciate the real beauty of the river that births it, you need to find yourself on its upper reaches, on a shoreline far from the hustle and bustle of the main attraction. If you are truly lucky, Royal Chundu is where you will wash up, in your own private hideaway, right on the banks of this magical river.

Comprising two super-luxurious lodges – River Lodge and Island Lodge – Royal Chundu offers the decadence of space and privacy in the midst of an untamed riverine wilderness. The lodge encompasses 15 kilometres of pristine river frontage, with rapids upstream and downstream creating an aquatic oasis. Opposite lies a nature

reserve, where elephants, buffalo and a variety of antelope wander. It’s wild, yet utterly luxurious. Small wonder then that it was crowned Zambia’s Leading Luxury Lodge and Zambia’s Leading Ecolodge in the 2011 World Travel Awards.

Certainly if you’ve ever dreamed of being marooned on a tiny palm-dotted island – one with room service and an infinity pool, open-air bath tub and king-size bed, hairdryer and airconditioning – Royal Chundu’s Island Lodge is the one to book.

With only four villas, this is arguably the most exclusive lodge on the Zambezi; a great place to celebrate your nuptials, or reignite old romantic embers.

River Lodge is no less of an aphrodisiac.

Every one of the 10 airy suites, connected via a teak boardwalk, is carefully positioned to maximise views of the untamed forests and river, without compromising privacy.

If there’s any complaint, it’s how hard it is to tear yourself away from your new riverside home, with its deep armchairs, king-size bed and double showers – all with views of the swirling river and attendant birdlife.

But move you must, even if only because the pool deck beckons with double-size day beds and smiling staff to pour the first gin and tonic of the day. It’s the kind of place where you’re happy to rediscover the joy of doing nothing, so make sure you schedule enough time to do just that!

Naturally there are guided trips to Victoria Falls, a 30-minute drive from the lodge (for the eccentric and romantically inclined, best undertaken in Royal Chundu’s 1939 Rolls Royce), as well as game-viewing trips to nearby Chobe National Park.

But some of the best experiences on offer are unique to Royal Chundu. Firstly there’s the colonial elegance and detailing of the lodge itself: located on the site of the old Royal Chundu Zambezi River Lodge, it was built almost entirely from scratch by owner Hugh O’Mahoney, who attributes his style to the influence of his mother, Kitchie O’Mahoney.

Like so many intrepid women who settled in Africa after World War II, glamorous Kitchie was a born adventurer: from Malaysia, she travelled to Dorset,

Bathing al fresco is one of the great pleasures of Royal Chundu Island Lodge (top).

A sense of grandeur permeates the communal areas (above), but never at the expense of comfort.

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Hippo are a common sight on the Zambezi. The beautiful setting and intimate surrounds make Royal Chundu the perfect choice for a special occasion (below).

England, where she met and married Mike O’Mahoney, before finally setting sail for the uncharted wilds of Africa, where Mike had accepted a post as a surveying engineer in Northern Rhodesia.

According to Tina Aponte, Kitchie’s granddaughter and Royal Chundu’s managing director, “Kitchie embodied refinement in the extreme – regardless of the terrain. She refused to lower her standards, ever, and we’ve tried to uphold this. She always served in and on silver, so I scoured antique stores and websites

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to find authentic silver tea and coffee sets for the rooms and dining tables.

For island picnics in the middle of the Zambezi, my grandmother would pack her entire dinner service, full tablecloths and linen napkins. So now we offer our guests something similar: island picnics with tables, silverware, a full bar, Persian carpets, hammocks, the works!”

Another experience unique to Royal Chundu is to take a makoro trip to explore the tiny village of Mushekwa.

Here Edith Mushekwa, midwife and

marriage counselor, among other things, and the daughter of the village founder, personally meets guests. She takes them on a tour of the village, showing them her modest but immaculate mud and thatch house, the community garden, the precious manketi trees (according to Edith, “even the very poor can survive on this nut!”) and other interesting plants this fishing and farming community rely on to survive – a fascinating counterpoint to life at Royal Chundu.

Keen birders can ask for a personalised safari, looking specifically for species endemic to the Royal Chundu area, such as the black-cheeked lovebird or the emerald cuckoo. These can last as little as two and a half hours, to a full day – the choice is entirely yours. Similarly, the Royal Chundu fishing trips are tailormade to your requirements, be it to catch the infamously difficult tiger fish, or the prized Upper Zambezi yellow fish.

Whatever your interests, don’t miss Royal Chundu’s river rafting; an exhilarating trip that requires no experience. Guests are taken by open-topped vehicle to launch their inflatable canoes upstream from the lodge. Every canoe has an experienced paddler who steers you from lush reed banks, through island eddies and deepflowing channels, into playful rapids that are enormous fun to traverse. A makeshift bar, set up on a sandy beach, is the just reward for the intrepid rafter!

The floating spa is another reward well worth claiming. With the lullaby of the

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near livingstone, Zambia telephone: +27 (0)87 700 8310 Email: reservations@royalchundu.com Website: www.royalchundu.com

If you must make yourself available to work demands, the lodge offers Wi-Fi, satellite TV and cellphone signal. There’s also a business centre and conference facilities for small groups who appreciate that inspiring surrounds lead to inspiring solutions. But better by far to switch off that phone. For this is a magical place. As a recent visitor commented in the guest book, “At Victoria Falls I saw a rainbow, and now I know where that pot of gold is found: just a few kilometres upstream, at Royal Chundu!” n Pippa de Bruyn

PhotograPhs: royal chundu

river trickling past, you will be rubbed into a submissive, blissful state, ready for the next adventure – an hour in the hammock, before the evening sunset cruise, when the sinking African sun turns the river into molten gold.

Meals are served in a variety of locales, from the al fresco viewing deck to the elegant dining room. But it is dinners in the open-air boma that are a real highlight, with the famed Makishi (masked) dancers providing one of the most riveting performances you’ll witness in any lodge.

royal chundu luxury Zambezi river lodge (10 units) and island lodge (four units) is a 30-minute journey from the Victoria Falls and livingstone airport by road. it is also within easy striking distance of chobe national Park in botswana.

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The Cellars-Hohenort ∙ South Africa

Green delight Hidden deep in the verdant Constantia valley, The Cellars-Hohenort is a very special establishment. The product of owner Liz McGrath’s undying devotion, its luxurious surrounds, unsurpassed attention to detail, personalised service and gourmet food offerings make it a remarkable destination. A Relais & Châteaux property, it ticks every box the discerning traveller could possibly have.

I

t’s a mere 15 minutes from the centre of Cape Town, in the heart of the Cape Peninsula, but The Cellars-Hohenort feels as if it’s deep in the countryside. Set on the eastern slopes of Table Mountain, in the magnificent Constantia winelands, it is a haven of cultivated calm.

A glimpse of the spectacular gardens is what first greets visitors. There are

nine acres of gardens, boasting ancient trees, hidden walkways, soothing water features and myriad tranquil spots to sit and contemplate its beauty. And that’s not to mention the roses, for which owner Liz McGrath has a particular passion.

The hotel’s 52 rooms are well spread over the estate, with 15 in the historical Hohenort manor, which is filled with Cape

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Rooms are individually decorated in classic, contemporary style. The Greenhouse (above, left) provides an intimate setting for a gourmet dinner, while the Martini Bar (above, right) is a relaxed venue for drinks.

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antiques. Many give access onto either the gardens or onto one of the two heated swimming pools. There are also plenty of private verandas, from where guests can contemplate the beautiful gardens and catch a glimpse of the blue waters of False Bay in the distance.

Rooms and suites come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but all put comfort paramount, with beautifully layered beds and plush armchairs as standard. Adding to the personal touch which prevails are fresh flowers picked from the gardens.

Four premier suites each lead on to their own private walled garden – perfect for relaxing with a book outdoors. They also have a spacious bedroom with a kingsized bed, a luxurious bathroom, a cosy sitting room and a small kitchenette.

For those who really want to hide away from the world, The Madiba Villa is a Cape-style home tucked away in the gardens. Three en suite bedrooms, a kitchen, dining room and spacious lounge – all decorated in Liz McGrath’s elegant, timeless style – lead on to a private courtyard with plunge pool.

Even if you are in hiding, you can’t miss a meal at The Greenhouse. Eat Out named it the South African Restaurant of the Year in 2011, and Peter Tempelhoff – who presides over all six restaurants in The Collection

by Liz McGrath – is Cape Town’s only Grand Chef Relais & Châteaux.

A light-filled, intimate, botanicalinspired space, The Greenhouse provides the perfect backdrop to Peter’s remarkable culinary talents. Featuring seasonal, local

The Cellars-Hohenort

ingredients treated with care and restraint, his elegant dishes not only delight the palate, but are visually exquisite too.

A highlight is the unusual seafood tasting menu, where sustainable seafood is given pride of place. From light-as-air crayfish custard with comforting sweet potato mousse, through diver scallops, seared and served with a curry sauce and sultana puree, to steamed local kabeljou with lobster bouillabaisse, all are a revelation.

A playful touch is evident in the à la carte menu, with dishes divided among “slightly chilled”, “somewhat cooked” and “medium to rare”. Meaty options include impala carpaccio or oven-roasted duck breast with honey-thyme roast figs.

For less formal fare, try The Conservatory, built around a 300-year-old oak tree. Here breakfast is served, as well as simple but delicious lunches and dinners. Like The Greenhouse, it’s open to non-residents as well. For an authentic taste of the Cape, book The Cape Malay Experience and enjoy the spicy cuisine that has evolved from

17th-century Indian and Malay settlers.

Round off the day with a nightcap in The Martini Bar, a chic lounge featuring bright polka dot fabrics and extensive drinks list – from its namesake martini to award-winning Constantia wines.

For the requisite holiday pampering, head to the hair salon or spa. The signature Intonga stick massage is heaven on stiff muscles; the Liz McGrath rose facial gently nurtures skin; or try a revitalising walnut and marula body scrub.

For the more active, there’s a tennis court, Gary Player-designed putting and chipping green, bicycles and pétanque. If you’re in Cape Town on business, there are also three exclusive meeting rooms, ideal for small gatherings.

Running like a golden mean throughout is the professionalism and dedication of the staff. Personalised care, attention to detail and a desire to share the wonderful aspects of the estate with guests, make a visit to The Cellars-Hohenort an unforgettable experience indeed. n Lisa van Aswegen

Constantia, Cape Town, Western Cape, SA Telephone: +27 (0)21 794 2137 Email: reservations @collectionmcgrath.com Website: www.cellars-hohenort.com The Cellars-Hohenort is set in nine acres of award-winning gardens in the heart of the Constantia winelands. It‘s an easy 30-minute drive from Cape Town International Airport and 15 minutes from the V&A Waterfront.

The Hohenort manor dates back more than 100 years and is surrounded by nine acres of gardens, some of which provide fresh fruit and vegetables for the kitchen.

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A legend in hospitality The remarkable woman behind The Collection by Liz McGrath shares her 25-year journey and words of wisdom.

Compiled by Michelle Snaddon

n When you bought the Look Out Hotel in Plettenberg Bay, a much-loved landmark, did you ever imagine you’d start The Collection?

Never in a million years! When my husband died I just had to do something with my life. We had bought the old one-star Look Out with a view to living there, but then I thought of turning it into an exclusive hotel. The Plettenberg opened in 1987, after extensive refurbishment, and some 18 months later the hotel was invited to become part of Relais & Châteaux. That was a great moment in my life. I was overwhelmed when they invited me to become a member. n And The Cellars-Hohenort, how did that come about? I saw an advert in the newspaper for a nine-room guesthouse for sale in Constantia. I didn’t mean to buy The Cellars.

I just flew down to Cape Town to have a look.

And then I fell immediately in love. A year later the Hohenort was added to the property. n Was The Marine also love at first sight?

It was another hotel I never meant to buy!

It was during whale season in Hermanus that I popped in to have a cup of tea at The Marine and it was looking rather sad. I love old buildings and love to restore them, and I suddenly decided it would be wonderful to start all over again. n Looking back, what strikes you? What an exciting journey it has been: filled with so many highs, and with wonderful people who have become my extended family. Lots of lessons taught and learned. I am very blessed to have been able to do this with my life and to play a role in promoting our beautiful country. n

What has been your proudest moment?

Two awards I am very proud of are the Relais & Châteaux Woman of the Year 2008 award in Washington among the owners of 450

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properties from all over the world, and the Relais & Châteaux Garden of the Year 2010 award.

But a close second was the week when Peter Tempelhoff, Executive Chef at The Greenhouse, received Grand Chef Relais & Châteaux status in Lisbon on Monday, and then The Greenhouse was named South African Restaurant of the Year by Eat Out on Sunday!

Liz McGrath is the only woman in the world to own three hotels that are all members of the prestigious Relais & Châteaux association. The hotels are The Plettenberg in Plettenberg Bay,

n

If you’re not pruning roses, or popping your head into the kitchen, you can be seen with guests who are thrilled by the fact that you remember their favourite drink. Has this always been your style? Yes. I truly believe that staying in a Relais & Châteaux five-star hotel must be an all embracing experience, and that the personal touch of an owner or staff member is essential. I get tremendous satisfaction from two things. Firstly, from seeing guests enjoy themselves and gain an insight into our country, and secondly, from seeing my staff develop. As a hotelier, I’m only as good as my team and I have a fantastic staff. I think my best attribute in business is my ability to pick people with the right attitude; you can train anyone to do a job if they have that. I love to see young people who had no skills succeeding at something. n

Tell us about the rose that’s named in your honour? Being a passionate rose lover, this present from my family of my very own rose is probably the best gift I have ever received. n

How do you define luxury? Luxury is indefinable, it means different things to different people. To me it is a sense of place, where one can be surrounded by the things one loves best and the people one loves best. n

You were one of the first in South Africa to get an iPad and have embraced new technology. How did it change your life? No

The Marine in Hermanus and The Cellars-Hohenort in Cape Town – all icons of first-class travel and a testament to the passion and business acumen of the amazing “Mrs M” as she is fondly known.

more endless paper trails sent on to me by my PAs, and the amount of time wasted on the telephone has been cut by half . n

What’s on your bucket-list? To take a cruise on the Black Sea. n

What’s your favourite weekend escape? A game reserve. Londolozi and Singita are special. n

What are you reading? Catherine the Great and Potemkin by Simon Sebag Montefiore. I read a great many biographies. n

Favourite dish? A perfectly cooked piece of fresh, fresh fish, straight out of the sea. n

Any words of wisdom? I truly believe that we live in a wonderful country, and in comparison to the horrors going on in so many countries across the globe, we have a good chance of a successful future. South Africans can get out there and make it happen. And never feel you are too mature to try all the new technology that emerges every day.

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OPEN TUESDAY TO SUNDAY FROM 11:00 AM – 7:00 PM FOR SUNDOWNERS MONDAY BY APPOINTMENT - FOR PRIVATE PARTIES, PLEASE CONTACT US P.O. BOX 12605 – ANNANDALE ROAD – STELLENBOSCH – SOUTH AFRICA . 7600 PHONE: +27 21 881 3677 – FAX: +27 21 881 3667 INFO@PETERFALKEWINES.CO.ZA – WWW.PETERFALKEWINES.COM

Four Seasons Resort Seychelles

A hilltop retreat in a quiet corner of paradise Just the ticket for a deeply romantic holiday or indulgent family break, Four Seasons Resort Seychelles has brought a new level of sophistication to the less trampled southwest coast of MahĂŠ. The location is postcard perfect: a sheltered cove of soft, white sand with shady coconut palms and dramatic granite boulders.

In this secluded setting, designer tree houses, hidden in the jungle, are sanctuaries of minimalist luxury inspired by the island’s Creole culture.

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ocated just a few degrees south of the Equator in the Indian Ocean, the Seychelles is famed for its worldclass beaches. Mahé, the largest of the 115 islands that form the archipelago, is where you’ll find the Four Seasons, with 67 luxury villas perched like extravagant tree houses on a steep, densely forested slope above the sheltered cove of Petite Anse. As beautiful beaches go in the Seychelles, it’s up there with the very best.

The islands maintain a vibrant ethnic diversity and a strong French Creole influence, which is reflected in many aspects of the Four Seasons experience, from the cuisine to the architecture.

While island hopping to nearby Praslin,

La Digue and some of the smaller inner islands offers a wealth of cultural and natural history discoveries – not least the UNESCO Vallée de Mai on Praslin – once you’ve checked into the Four Seasons you may not want to go anywhere else.

Staying in a Four Seasons villa is like having the keys to a smart little beach house, but with the added advantages of being attached to a five-star resort – its spa, kids club and choice of restaurants just a buggy transfer away.

Close to the pool and beach is the barefootchic Kannel, serving Creole-inspired dishes, pizzas and a light, lean spa menu throughout the day. Nothing beats dining beneath cinnamon trees on red snapper

curry, fragrant with lemongrass, ginger and coconut milk, followed by banana fritters with cinnamon ice cream. Guests sometimes sign up for a fun-filled, openair cooking class with Kannel’s chef, which encompasses local cuisine, island history and Seychellois traditions.

Higher up the hill is the more glamorous Zez, showcasing fresh seafood and crowdpleasing Mediterranean dishes, such as antipasti and mezze. Thanks to the views, the adjoining Zez bar is a sociable spot for sundowners and tapas.

There’s also a fitness centre, although in these Eden-like surroundings it feels completely natural to forego the gym in favour of walking along one of the

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resort’s marked nature trails, snorkelling in the bay or learning to paddle board.

Recycled wood, hewn granite, sea shells and immense glass walls are the stylish building blocks of the hilltop spa, dramatically carved into granite rock with a bird’s eye view of Petite Anse far below. When the sea and sun get too much, there are a dozen treatment pavilions with private amenities plus an open-air yoga pavilion.

The spa excels at holistic, indigenous treatments fusing Indian techniques, Asian traditions and natural, locally sourced ingredients. Extracts of tropical flowers and spices, coconut oil, raw cane sugar and local fruits are incorporated into a range of pure homegrown products used for indulgent treatments. Popular, especially for sun worshippers, is a topto-toe body exfoliation using raw cane sugar and fresh pineapple that prepares skin for a moisture-drenched massage.

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PhotograPhs: four seasons resort seychelles

Each of the 67 villas has expansive indoor and outdoor spaces. Interiors are sophisticated, colourful and extremely comfortable, and feature large glass-walled bathrooms (opposite, below) that feel like another living space.

All have a deep rim-flow pool that wraps around to a sun deck with a rain shower, while The Royal Suite (above) has a large pool terrace that leads directly onto the beach.

Underpinning everything is the seamless service and attention to detail for which Four Seasons as a brand has become world renowned. On the beach, for example, friendly staff are always on hand to provide fresh towels along with chunks of chilled fruit, freshly squeezed juices and mineral water, and complimentary foot massages and sunglass polishing.

The villas complement, rather than compete, with the natural surroundings.

In the design and construction of the resort, every effort was made to preserve the fragile ecosystem of the densely forested slopes. Villas were built between magnificent takamaka and ylang ylang trees, to avoid cutting them down while also maximising guest privacy and tranquillity. Trees that had to be cut were repurposed as timber flooring in Kannel.

The interiors draw inspiration from the island’s French Creole vernacular.

Hardwood floors and white-washed

timber-slat walls are a foil to an inviting, generous space that feels furnished, rather than decorated. In truth, it’s a carefully curated collection of intentionally mismatched objects that blends the sophisticated ambience of a Parisian apartment – think family heirlooms and contemporary art – with the warmth and comfort of a traditional island home.

An indoor-outdoor design aesthetic is evident throughout – conducive to easy holiday living. A glass-walled bathroom leads out to a rain shower, wraparound verandas, a private pool and a shady pavilion with a generous daybed for siesta, sundowners or simply “being”.

In the Seychelles, it’s simply a matter of switching off before tuning into paradise’s natural soundtrack: a cacophony of bird calls, the rustle of giant tropical leaves in the breeze and the hypnotic sound of waves breaking on the shore. n Jane Broughton

four seasons resort seychelles seychelles

Petite anse, Mahé, seychelles telephone +248 439 3000 email: reservations.sey@fourseasons.com Website: www.fourseasons.com/ seychelles

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Restaurant, bars, library and lobby are grouped around the stunning infinity pool that holds the central space with serene poise and magical reflections.

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Constance Le Prince Maurice ∙ Mauritius

An oasis of serene style A private peninsula stretches out into a spreading lagoon fringed by mangroves, the ideal location for an exclusive and intimate island hotel.

Here peace and tranquillity are woven into the very fabric of the sugar-cane-thatched buildings, and discreet feng shui creates an energy that heals and soothes. All is in place for the most indulgent of escapes.

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A

The lofty entrance leads through to the large main pool, while Le Barochois restaurant (top) comprises five pontoons floating on the lagoon. Lanterns strung along the walkway cast a magical reflection in the water, making for a truly romantic setting.

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soft breeze wafts through the palms, carrying with it aromas of sun-warmed nutmeg, hints of exotic spices and tantalising flower bouquets. Gentle ripples lap the soft sand and the sound of surf crashing on the coral reef at the far edge of the lagoon is muffled by distance.

The warmth is soporific, lulling you into a state of complete relaxation that is a balm to the soul: nothing to hurry for, no need to worry, as everything here at Constance Le Prince Maurice is taken care of even before you ask.

Situated on the east coast of Mauritius, the luxury resort is the only Relais and Châteaux property on the island.

While its acclaim is international, its roots are firmly entrenched in its home soil. Owned by Mauritian luxury hotel group Constance Hotels Experience, and designed by Mauritian architect, JeanMarc Eynaud, it blends sympathetically with the natural beauty of this coastline, taking the best of island traditions and raising them to the highest levels of comfort and service.

From the minute you enter the airy lobby, with its serene décor and myriad water features, sip a welcoming passion-fruit

and rosewater cocktail and look out over the huge infinity pool that blends seamlessly into the turquoise of the lagoon beyond, there is no question but that this is a tropical paradise designed to cocoon and nurture.

The toughest choice guests have to make is whether to go for one of the suites perched on stilts over the lagoon – where you can watch the fish immediately below the deck – or for one giving straight out onto the powdery sands of the sheltered northfacing beach, with views to the wooded shores on the far side of the lagoon.

Whichever you choose it will be spacious, elegant and harmoniously decorated in shades of earth, spices and forest – and with every creature comfort as standard.

The best choice of all, though, is the 350 square metre Princely Suite, tucked in its own secluded corner with beach on two sides and two private heated pools.

Live music drifting across the pool from the Laguna bar to the L’Archipel restaurant every evening complements the refined but unostentatious ambience of this world-class eatery, where Asian and Mauritian flavours mingle with French flair to provide truly excellent meals. One night you might be enjoying a delicious seafood risotto to the sound of a jazz band, another sampling a delicately spiced curry or indulging in lobster to the accompaniment of the sitar and drum.

Alternatively, a romantic sunset meal at the unique floating restaurant, Le Barachois, with its seafood grill and twinkling lights reflecting in the still waters, is high on atmosphere.

The nurturing aspect of Le Prince Maurice becomes even more apparent at the Spa de Constance, where expert staff offer not only massages but a whole range of personalised treatments, including rejuvenating Guerlain facials from therapists trained in France.

Just because life here is so relaxing, it doesn’t mean that you have to spend every minute lulled into somnolent bliss.

There is a whole menu of water sports available directly from the beach to tempt both beginners and experts into an adrenaline high. Sailing, wind surfing,

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The Princely Suite (below) boasts private heated pools and easy access to the beach.

But even junior suites (bottom) ooze luxury with spacious interiors in elegant spice tones.

constance le Prince Maurice

Poste de Flacq, Mauritius telephone: +230 402 3636 Email: info@princemaurice.com Website: http://princemaurice. constancehotels.com

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sample the street markets in the nearest town, or go sightseeing around the island.

Such is the tranquillity of the private peninsula, though, that these faraway activities struggle to compete with the appeal of another day of being pampered at the spa, exploring the lagoon or lazing on the beach – where chilled bottles of water, fresh fruit skewers or sorbets are brought to you at intervals throughout the day. It’s so much more than just another day in paradise. n Kit Heathcock

PhotograPhs: lE PrincE MauricE

kayaking, snorkelling, water skiing and glass-bottom boat excursions are all included, each offering a different way of exploring the waters and discovering adventure. Paddle up close among the mangroves in the sheltered bay, flirt with the wind in the vast open lagoon or make closer acquaintance with the entrancing marine life of coral and fish on the reef.

There’s also the attraction of golf at sister property Constance Belle Mare Plage just down the coast. Or you could cycle to

the resort comprises 76 suites and 13 villas set within 60 hectares of tropical gardens. it’s a 15-minute flight by helicopter from the international airport to the hotel’s private helipad.

“Fashion fades, only style remains the same,� said Coco Chanel.

Our special section is dedicated

PhotograPh: greatstock

to its timeless icons.

Opulent Living Style

An icon Open Air for generations Generations From the first convertible launched in 1949, Porsche's open-topped sports cars have always been a winner for the brand.

With all the performance of the coupé and the added allure of an open-top, what's not to love about the Porsche Cabriolet?

by Harry Fisher

S

ince Porsche unveiled its brandnew 911 Carrera Cabriolet in early 2012, the plaudits have come racing in. “It's flat-out brilliant,” said Top Gear writer Paul Horrell. “The cabrio retains all the core strengths of the coupé but adds a charm of its own.”

Edmunds Inside Line was no less complimentary. “If the standard coupé is the best all-around 911 ever, then the Cabrio is all that and then some.”

“It's hard to think of an open-top performance car with such a broad set of abilities – and such entertaining qualities,” raved Greg Kable of AutoWeek.

So just why is everyone so enthralled by this new Cabriolet. Well, for starters, there's the intelligent lightweight design.

Like the new 911 Carrera Coupé, it's larger but lighter than previous models thanks to a predominantly aluminium floorplan and the use of magnesium in the hood. It's also more rigid – which means it handles like a dream.

“The car has colossal grip and a kind of composure and reassuring stability the old one simply wouldn't recognise,” says Top Gear's Horrell. “You really feel all four tyres sharing the work.”

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Out back, not much has changed.

There's the same powerful yet more fuel-efficient version of Porsche's classic six-cylinder engine – 3.4 litre in the 911 Carrera Cabriolet, 3.6-litre in the Carrera S. A seven-speed PDK (Porsche Doppelkupplungsgetriebe) dual-clutch gearbox with steering-wheel-mounted paddles for remote shifting is standard in South Africa, and there's the option of a seven-speed manual transmission.

Topping it all, though, is the new roof design. It folds away in 13 seconds at speeds of up to 50 kilometres per hour.

But that's not what makes it a sheer piece of engineering genius.

What does, is its new construction. Made up of a series of lightweight magnesium panels sandwiched between the inner and outer layers of cloth, when up, it's effectively a hard-top. “Run your hand over it and chances are you’ll not find a soft spot,” reports Shaun Bailey of Road and Track. There's also no sense from the passenger compartment that it’s a Cabriolet: “It’s quiet, warm and produces absolutely no buffeting or whistling.”

And that's not to mention its shape.

Purists have always complained that the

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An icon for generations

Ferdinand Porsche, born in 1875 in Bohemia, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was one of the great engineers of the 20th century.

He first drew acclaim when he presented the Lohner-Porsche electric car at the Paris World Exhibition in 1900. In 1906 he joined Austro-Daimler as chief designer. When that merged with Benz & Cie to form DaimlerBenz, Porsche worked on the Mercedes-Benz S model. However, Porsche had plans for a small, lightweight car that didn't meet with Daimler-Benz's approval, so resigned.

Porsche started his own company in Stuttgart in 1931, developing a Grand Prix racer with a 16-cylinder engine, the Auto Union, in 1933, and finally designing his people's car, the iconic Volkswagen Beetle, in 1934, completing the first prototype in 1935.

Cabriolet didn't have the iconic Porsche silhouette – but the new top has virtually put paid to that, mirroring the coupé's sleek body almost perfectly when up.

So, with all the performance and sporting good looks of the coupé, but with the added allure of open-air driving, the new Porsche Cabriolet looks set to be a winner. The Cabriolet already accounts for 40 percent of all 911 sales – and that doesn't look likely to change.

Purists may still complain but, like it or not, the Cabriolet has always been an important element of the Porsche story.

Indeed, the very first Porsche, designed and built in 1948 by Volkswagen founder Ferdinand Porsche and his son Ferry, was an open-topped car.

In 1949, the Porsche 356 went into production – and from the start the rear-engine, rear-wheel-drive, two-door sports car was available in hardtop coupé

and open-top cabriolet configurations.

In 1954, Max Hoffman, the official US importer for Porsche, persuaded the company to offer a stripped down and lightened 356 cabriolet for the fairweathered American west coast, and the open-top 356 Speedstar was born. It was a hit – especially after actor James Dean raced his to third place in the Palm Springs Road Races in March 1955. The little German racing car took on all his bad-boy appeal – and Porsche had cornered the all-important US market.

It's the light and skimpy open-top Spyder that will be forever associated with the Rebel Without a Cause star, however. Dean upgraded to the Spyder in September of 1955 – and not longer had a fatal crash, cementing both his and Porsche's place in the history books.

Production of the 356 lasted until 1965 – two years after the first 911 went into

After the war, Porsche and his son Ferry worked

to

concentrating

rebuild on

their their

business earlier

by

racing

projects. In 1948, the first car to bear his name went into production. He died in 1951 and in 1999 was posthumously awarded the title of Car Engineer of the Century.

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1948 First Porsche constructed.

Open-top design is a feature from the beginning.

1949 First 356 Cabriolet built.

1978 The front-engined 928 is introduced.

1965 911 Targa introduced.

1963 911 announced as a replacement for the 356.

1969 911 Targa gets glass rear window in place of canvas and plastic fitting.

1986 First Cabriolet version of the 911 Turbo.

1983 First full 911 Cabriolet introduced.

1996 Boxster announced. It's the first open-top Porsche since the 550 Spyder to be designed as a cabriolet from the start, rather than converted from a coupé.

1996 New Targa announced with sliding glass roof panel.

2012 Seventh Generation 911 Cabriolet launched in Carrera and Carrera S specifications.

2005 Porsche Carrera GT launched, the ultimate open-top Porsche.

The Porsche 911 Cabriolet, first introduced in 1983, accounts for 40 per cent of all

production in the company's factory in Zuffenhausen, Germany This is the marque that defines the brand to the majority of enthusiasts – and is the model on which Porsche built its name for high performance on the road.

Porsche has attempted to pension off the 911 a few times in the nearly 50 years it's been around – but strong public opposition has always ensured that it's remained in production.

As with the 356, a cabriolet was always going to be part of the 911 story. As early as 1965, the open-top 911 Targa was announced. Named for the Sicilian road race, the Targa Florio, it had a removable roof panel and a removable plastic rear window. The word “targa” means “shield” in Italian and makes reference to another key feature of the car – a prominent roll bar. This was introduced to sidestep American legislation, which looked like it might ban fully open-topped cars on US roads.

As the 911 was developed and gained ever larger and more powerful engines, the Targa remained in the catalogue, offering the best of both motoring worlds.

But in 1981, a Cabriolet concept car was introduced at the Frankfurt Motor Show.

The open-topped car had escaped the swinging axe of US lawmakers, and the timeLorem had come Porsche to launch a ipsum for dolor sit amet, trueconsectetuer convertible adipiscing once again. elit. commodo ligula eget in late The Aenean first 911 Cabriolet debuted dolor.

Aenean massa.

Cum 1982, as a 1983 model. It was Porsche’s sociis natoque penatibus et first cabriolet since the 356 went out of magnis dis parturient montes, production in the mid 1960s – and it was nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec an immediate especially among quam felis,success ultricies–nec, the nouveau pellentesq.riche of the 1980s economic

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Porsche 911 sales.

boom. It's not been out of production since – and has only continued to grow in popularity and performance.

In 1996, Porsche addressed a completely new market when it launched the 986 Boxster. In a design inspired by the 356 Speedster and 550 Spyder, it was introduced in cabriolet form first – a significant nod to how important the cabriolet market had become. Its midengined layout gave it a low centre of gravity, near-perfect weight distribution, and neutral handling – and many believe it saved the company from acquisition.

The Boxster has had several facelifts over the years – the 987 debuted in 2004, the 987 Generation 2 in 2008, and the 981 has

just hit the road. It's also been released in special editions, including the 550 Spyder 50th Anniversary Edition in 2004.

The Porsche 944, produced between 1984 and 1991 and as good a driver’s car as the 911, was also realeased in a beautifully engineered and executed Cabriolet version – although its frontmounted engine never sat well with Porsche purists.

Because, for most pundits, the quirkiness of the 911 was Porsche. As the 911 shape became entrenched as the epitome of what a Porsche should look like, the company phased out the front-engined models and left the sports car tag to the rear-engined veteran.

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Integer tincidunt. Cras dapibus.

Vivamus elementum semper nisi.

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An icon for generations

Ferry Porsche, son of “the great engineer” Ferdinand, in the iconic open-topped sports car

In the mid-1990s, the 911 Targa made a welcome reappearance – this time with a sliding glass roof panel that slides down behind the rear window panel, and full automation. The reconfiguration did cause US motoring journal Motor Trend to write: “Particularly at night, the reflections in the two rear windows can be wacky.” The roof panel could be seen as a glorified sunroof, but as an engineering exercise, it was a technical tour de force.

As the 911 and its popular Cabriolet continues into the 21st century, it has become an icon of engineering excellence. Chopping off the roof of a car takes away structural rigidity. But that the new seventh-generation 911 Carrera Cabriolet has many, if not all, of the performance attributes of its coupé sibling, proves just how far engineering science really has come. “If you took engineer's measurements, no doubt the top-chopping process might have deprived it of rigidity,” says Top Gear's Paul Horrell. “But when you drive, any shake and twist is as close to indiscernible as makes no difference.”

“So much of the coupe's astonishing ability has been carried over intact that it's hard to discern between the two,” agrees Edmund's Inside Line. “There's almost no ipsum body roll, more grip than Lorem dolorand sit amet, we know what to do with.” consectetuer adipiscing elit.

Aenean commodo Another strong sellingligula pointeget is the Porsche dolor.

Aenean massa.

Cum reputation for mixing performance with sociis natoque penatibus et real-world practicality. While their highly magnis dis parturient montes, strung Italian thoroughbred rivals lead a nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec pampered existence more often than quam felis, ultricies– nec, not pellentesq. in the hands of an expert mechanic

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– it is a commonly accepted fact that a Porsche is virtually indestructible and can be used as daily transport without issue.

Says Edmund's Inside Line: “The 911 has always been the everyday supercar, and that's true now more than ever.

The interior is very sensible and very Germanic. There are no eccentricities, no Ferrari-esque jewellery: just good, functional design.”

So, purists be damned. The Cabriolet is here to stay. In fact, what could be closer to motoring perfection. All the performance and handling of a top sports car with the added romance of an open-top.

Porsche has always been on a journey of its own; a journey of engineering

he created (below). The 918 Spyder (left), shown at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show, is Porsche's first hybrid vehicle.

excellence, irrespective of what direction the rest of the automotive world was heading in. The fact that its new 911 Carerra models are now regarded as being among the best sports cars in the world is proof that its self-belief has not been misplaced.

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Flights of fancy

A modern-day Cinderella

mountains surrounding the

flees down the 49 steps of

Winelands. Sir Francis

Rhodes Memorial on Devil’s

Macey and Sir Herbert Baker

Peak – losing a designer

incorporated Doric columns

slipper as she goes.

to honour Rhodes’ love

The 1912 monument to

of classical architecture, and

Cecil John Rhodes, mining

49 steps to symbolise each

magnate and prime minister

year of his life. Eight lions,

of the Cape Colony, is a

cast in-situ, were modelled

favourite Cape Town land-

on those protecting Nelson’s

mark with views stretching

column in Trafalgar Square,

out across the city to the

London.

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Opulent Opulent Living Living 125 3

Gucci: black nappa leather “1973” shoe with buckle detail, R6 110.

St George’s Cathedral, which stands at the entrance to The Company's Garden in the historic heart of Cape Town, is still a popular spot for glamorous weddings.

The “people's cathedral”, where Archbishop Desmond Tutu once preached against apartheid, was originally built in 1834. Sir Herbert Baker redesigned it using Table Mountain stone in the early 1900s and the Duke of Cornwall, later King George V, laid the foundation stone.

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Errol Arendz: silk Sabine sandal, R1 400. Ferragamo: peep-toe platform, R6 990.

These glamorous shoes on the stairs at the Casa Labia in Muizenberg are perfect for modern-day princesses.

The Italianate villa was built in 1929 by Count Natale Labia, the Italian consul to South Africa. It was modelled on the Count's family home, the Palazzo Labia in Venice, and all its ornate furnishings, from the silk on the walls to the glittering chandeliers, were imported from that city.

Now restored to its former glory, it houses an elegant cafĂŠ and art gallery.

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Fendi: moderate platform shoe from the AW2011/12 Collection, R9 350.

For a spell of quiet reflection, pause awhile on these lichened-covered stone steps in Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. Originally a farm laid out on the fertile eastern slopes of Table Mountain, Kirstenbosch was bequethed to the nation by Cecil John Rhodes in 1902. It was established as a botanical garden to protect the Cape's unique floral kingdom in 1913, and today is a popular spot for walks, picnics and sunset concerts.

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Hugo Boss: Corynne sandal in black leather, made in Italy, R6 995.

The Bo Kaap offers a colourful glimpse into Cape history. Set on the slopes of Signal Hill, the Cape Malay Quarter has cobbled streets and centuries-old cottages in rainbow hues. Nobody's sure why they're so bright, but some say that colour was typical of 17th century Cape Dutch architecture, and has simply been maintained by a community that traces its roots to the Indonesian and Malaysian slaves brought to the Cape in the 1700s.

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Louis Vuitton: embroidered silk and sequinned Odeon sandal, lined in calf, R9 350.

Escape with your Prince Charming for a romantic break at exclusive Dock House. Built in the 1800s as a private residence for the Cape Town harbour master, this beautifully restored Cape Victorian building is now a luxury boutique hotel, its six plush rooms and large groomed garden providing a quiet refuge in the heart of the vibrant V&A Waterfront.

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Celebration in a bottle

The story of an exceptional blended Scotch whisky produced in honour of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.

by Sebastian Bartlett

S

he is famously the woman who went to bed in an African treetop a princess, and came down the next morning a queen.

It was 6 February 1952, and her father – the much-loved King George VI – had passed away the previous night, while she was on a royal tour to Kenya and Australia. Elizabeth hurried back to England – although it was to be 16 months before her official coronation.

For the world was a different place the year Princess Elizabeth Windsor was proclaimed Queen of England.

Celebrating a coronation while the nation still mourned a King who had seen them through the Second World War was not the done thing. This was a slower, simpler time, when the memories of a world at war were fresh in the minds of Britons, and things were done properly, or not at all.

Celebration in a bottle

The Diamond Jubilee blend includes some of John Walker & Sons’ most famous whiskies, including John Walker Blended Scotch Whisky, King George V and Johnnie Walker XR. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” says Master Blender Jim Beveridge. “These are extraordinary grain and malt whiskies that have been maturing slowly since 1952. It was a privilege to work with them to craft a blend fitting for this special anniversary.”

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Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, wave to the crowds on her coronation in June 1953.

of which was distilled in 1952, the year of the queen’s accession, and has been maturing silently ever since.

Drawing on his 30 years of experience, as well as inspiration from the Walker family blending notes, Master Blender Jim Beveridge and his apprentice Matthew Crow – men who may well have “the water of life” flowing in their veins – tasted, sniffed and swirled their way through the annals of whisky history; selecting the John Walker malts that were deemed worthy to be a thread in the rich tapestry of the Diamond Jubilee blend.

And although the individual malts had been maturing for six decades, a touch

more time was needed to allow them to meld harmoniously together into a single superlative whisky.

With the Queen’s permission, oak trees from the royal Sandringham estate were felled for the marrying casks that would complete the blending process.

Once felled and seasoned, the beautiful fine-grained oak staves were lovingly hand-crafted by Master Cooper David Taylor; a worthy final project for a man who has been a cooper with John Walker & Sons for over four decades.

From the towering oaks, the finest staves created just two small wooden casks, jointed seamlessly by age-old techniques to ensure not a drop of the delicate blend would be lost.

Time and space were needed next and the Royal Lochnagar Distillery, on the fringes of the Queen’s Balmoral Estate in Scotland, proved just the place. Resting

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PhotograPh: gallo images / getty images

It was a time when care was taken and workmen took pride in their trade. Skills were handed down from generation to generation, father to son, master to apprentice. In today’s homogenised world that craftsmanship and attention to detail is often hard to find.

So as Queen Elizabeth celebrates her Diamond Jubilee – marking 60 years on the throne – it is fitting that John Walker & Sons, who have cherished a Royal Warrant as Scotch Whisky Distillers By Appointment to Her Majesty The Queen since 1934, have created a blended Scotch whisky that is as elegant and dignified as the Queen herself.

Just 63 bottles of this landmark malt have been produced, making it perhaps the most sought-after whisky this century. One bottle is, fittingly, for the Queen herself, two are for the archives of John Walker & Sons, and the final 60 will be offered to selected whisky connoisseurs and collectors worldwide.

The Diamond Jubilee whisky is a unique blend of grain and malt whiskies, each

From the six-faceted diamond decanter to the personalised

in the cool embrace of Britain’s northern climes, the marrying casks with their precious cargo were left in peace until Beveridge decided they were ready for the light of day.

That day was 6 February 2012, 60 years to the day since Elizabeth acceded to the throne, when the century’s most exclusive whisky was carefully bottled and sealed.

But perhaps “bottle” is a touch of British understatement. Like an Aston Martin is a “car”, or Fortnum & Mason a “grocer”, so the decanter for the Diamond Jubilee is so much more than just a glass container – it's a work of art in itself.

Brought to life by Baccarat, the acclaimed French crystal producer that traces its lineage to 1734 and the patronage of Louis XV, the exquisite diamond-shaped

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decanter rests on six radial legs – one for each decade Queen Elizabeth has been on the throne.

Created by eight of Baccarat’s Meilleurs Ouvriers de France – or “Best Workmen of France” – this finely crafted decanter is in itself a glittering throne for a truly regal whisky.

Adorned with Britannia silver by Scottish silversmiths Hamilton & Inches, and a collar that features a half-carat diamond, the silver is hallmarked with the commemorative Diamond Jubilee mark. Both receptacle and talking point, the decanter is a worthy companion to the fine whisky it cradles.

But the journey of the Diamond Jubilee whisky doesn’t end there. To ensure that this exclusive blend will become a sought-after collector’s item, each

artefact book, each element has been made by hand.

decanter is offered with a pair of glasses crafted by England’s only pure leadcrystal producer – Cumbria Crystal, situated in England’s scenic Lake District.

And just as the fine embroidery on Elizabeth’s coronation dress embraced the natural beauty of the Commonwealth – the Tudor rose of England, the humble Welsh leek, Canada’s maple leaf, India’s sultry lotus flowers, and even the magnificent South African protea – so the lead crystal glasses that accompany this outstanding whisky celebrate the natural beauty of the estates that are closest to the Queen’s heart.

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Celebration in a bottle

Sandringham Estate, part of the Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, has long been the Queen’s most cherished rural escape, while Balmoral in her mother's native Scotland was a favourite retreat for her parents, who called it a “happy house”. So it’s fitting that renowned craftsman Philip Lawson Johnston – himself a holder of a Royal Warrant – has engraved each glass with wildlife scenes from both Sandringham and Balmoral.

Binding the heritage of the whisky, decanter and glasses together, a handbound artefact book – personalised with the name of each fortunate owner – has been created by Calligrapher

By Appointment to Her Majesty The Queen, Sally Mangum. For collectors who may wish to mature their precious

acquisition for another 60 years, a bespoke cabinet by royal cabinet-makers N.E.J. Stevenson, incorporating oak and native Caledonian pine from the Queen’s Sandringham and Balmoral Estates, and decorated with fine marquetry using timber from around the Commonwealth, ensures the Diamond Jubilee whisky’s safe-keeping.

With such exclusivity and elegance, the opportunity to own, savour and admire such an impressive whisky comes along but once in a generation, and accordingly demands some investment.

Each of the 60 bottles will be sold for £100 000 each.

Of the money raised, at least £1 million will be donated to the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust (QEST), the charitable arm of the Royal Warrant Holders

Association that preserves rare craft and conservation skills, and enables them to continue and flourish.

From age-old malts to ancient skills remembered and passed down, it’s a fine tribute to a monarch who is second only to Queen Victoria for her longevity on the throne. Indeed, Queen Elizabeth is only the second British monarch ever to celebrate a Diamond Jubilee.

Yet while Queen Victoria remained in mourning for her beloved Prince Albert on the occasion of her rather restrained Diamond Jubilee in 1897, there is an altogether more celebratory mood across Britain in 2012. There's an Olympic Games to rally around, and a longstanding monarch to toast… and no finer whisky to toast her with than the John Walker & Sons Diamond Jubilee.

Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, which features prominently in the provenance and packaging of the Diamond Jubilee whisky, has been the private home of four generations of the British Royal Family.

King George VI, Queen Elizabeth’s father, died at the estate in 1952 and it has since become tradition for the Queen to spend the anniversary of her father‘s death – and thus her accession – here with her family.

The Diamond Jubilee whisky is a triumph of British artistry and craftsmanship, available to just 60 fortunate connoisseurs.

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Copyright lies with ExecuJet.

An ambassador for SA's youth Hollywood actress Charlize Theron uses her star appeal to raise both funds and awareness for charitable projects in South Africa.

Charlize Theron's Africa Outreach Project helps keep youth in South Africa's poorest communities safe from HIV/AIDS.

O

scar-winning actress Charlize Theron is South Africa’s golden girl and one of the country’s most famous exports. Growing up on a farm in Benoni, a chance win in a modelling competition at the age of 16 saw her off to Europe to live and work. Her love of ballet then drew her to New York to study dance.

After a series of knee injuries forced her to rethink her future, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting.

Her famous portrayal of a female serial killer in Monster earned her a Best Actress Academy Award in 2004, and a place on the list of highest paid actresses in Hollywood. In the same year, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project (CTAOP) was born in 2007 out of a desire to give back to her home country. Charlize partnered with the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF), a leading Hollywood organisation that manages charitable funds for people in the entertainment world. It helps identify areas in critical need of help, and manages the distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars to initiatives around the globe.

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Charlize's aim was to support community organisations that address the key drivers of HIV/AIDS. Mpilonhle, a nongovernmental organisation working in Umkhanyakude in northern KwaZuluNatal, was identified as a worthy partner.

This area, which includes the Greater St Lucia Wetlands Park, Sodwana Bay and the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Game Reserve, is famed for its outstanding natural beauty.

Largely unreported, however, is the extreme poverty – and the accompanying high levels of malnutrition, genderbased violence, adolescent pregnancy, substance abuse and disease. HIV infection rates are among the highest in the country – shockingly, youth growing up in Umkhanyakude District have an almost 50 per cent chance of becoming infected with HIV during their lifetime.

While much is being done to support those living with HIV/AIDS, many adolescents are woefully uninformed about the risks.

Mpilonhle aims to address this problem and help prevent the spread of the disease through education.

It was a perfect fit for CTAOP so, in collaboration with Oprah’s Angel Network, CTAOP’s first project was to

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PHOTOgrAPH: PICTure AllIAnCe

by Robyn Hodson

Through partnership with a charity in northern KwaZulu-Natal, Charlize's Africa Outreach Project aimed to educate vulnerable youth about the risks of HIV infections.

Charlize Theron afriCa ouTreaCh ProjeCT Website: www.charlizeafricaoutreach.org Twitter: @charlizeafrica facebook: www.facebook.com/ charlizeafricaoutreachproject Blog: http://africaoutreach.tumblr.com/ To make a DonaTion, visit the website. other projects supported by the CTaoP: V DaY: www.vday.org/home home from home:

provide lead funding for a mobile health and computer clinic.

Mpilonhle's clinics serve more than 8 000 community members and 10 000 students from 12 high schools. Each clinic services schools one week every month and offers access to a nurse and social worker or psychologist. Every student is offered HIV testing and receives guidance for a healthier life. They also receive four computer-training sessions with a focus on preventing HIV, along with four workshops on health education.

Each time she returns to one of schools, Charlize is always impressed by the enthusiasm of the kids: “Students are also teachers. They will walk out of that classroom and speak to their friends, parents and siblings. These kids become 100 to 1000 people, until you can’t distinguish where the knowledge began or who passed it around.”

In 2010, largely inspired by the FIFA World Cup held in South Africa that year,

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CTAOP and the ONEXONE Foundation collaborated to create an initiative called Home Field Advantage. It aimed to add to youth and community upliftment in the Umkhanyakude District by building soccer fields at local schools, and providing clean water sources.

With generous support from the Annenberg Foundation and other CTAOP supporters, construction on the sports fields and the water wells began in 2011.

Additionally, food gardens, laundry basins and composting toilets were built at four secondary schools as part of the initiative.

The aim is to create clean, central hubs where whole communities can gather and gain access to Mpilonhle's essential health services.

“I am excited for the continued service we are providing to the residents of South Africa,” says Charlize. “Sometimes it seems like change cannot happen, but if you can commit yourself to a cause and to the people, change is absolutely possible.”

www.homefromhome.org.za

Charlize is certainly committed and has organised fundraising events in both New York and Los Angeles to raise money for her projects. One recent event was the world premiere of Randall Slavin's celebrity photo series. Held at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles, Reach: 24 Portraits by Randall Slavin featured previously unseen works by the Californian artist, including moody shots of Clint Eastwood, Bill Clinton and Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder. The cocktail party launch attracted a bevy of fellow Hollywood stars and raised nearly US$70 000 for CTAOP.

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The art Open Airof for Generations complications Franck Müller's Aeternitas Mega 4 is a contender for the title of the world's most complicated watch - its talents include striking the chimes of Westminster.

High-end watches are no longer a story of precious metals or gems: they're about showing much more than mere time.

by Ken Kessler

J

ust two US dollars will buy a quartz-powered digital watch with timing accuracy once only dreamed about. Quartz arrived in the 1970s and all but killed-off the mechanical movement, ravaging the Swiss watch industry, almost to the degree that the digital camera diminished the use of film. Despite this, the less-precise mechanical watch has not merely survived: it has flourished.

A confluence of desires, including a widespread appreciation for luxury goods, revived the mechanical watch in the 1980s. A fine timepiece now represents the pinnacle of wristwear – especially for men, who do not have the freedom women do to express themselves through jewellery. A superior wristwatch, peeking out of a cuff, has become an indicator of one’s taste, position and attitude.

Watches began life as possessions solely for the nobility. It took the industrial revolution in the 19th century to deliver affordable pocket watches for the masses, followed in the 20th century by inexpensive wristwatches. Despite timekeeping being as basic a form of information as one can require, there

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has always been a demand for watches that went beyond mere time-telling, with the pedigree of a fine house’s name on the dial. For decades, that meant a highquality movement in a gold case.

Increasing sophistication among global consumers, especially over the past quarter-century, has forced watch manufacturers to do more to justify higher prices than employ precious metals in their cases, be it gold or platinum. Equally, the paving of a case with precious gems, or inserting diamonds as hour markers, added considerably to the final cost. But the new generation of watch aficionados wanted more than vulgarity and blingbling. They wanted complications.

Normally a mildly negative term, in watchmaking parlance a “complication” is any informative function that a watch can perform beyond the absolute basics of telling the hours, minutes, and seconds. The most common and useful complication is the date, followed by day of the week, month, year, moon phases and many others.

Two popular complications, the GMT and the chronograph, have specific professional applications and are much-

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loved by collectors. GMTs show the time in a second time zone; its more complex sibling, the world timer, shows all 24 time zones at once. A chronograph adds stop-watch functionality, and is standard equipment for pilots, at sporting events, and any other instances where time must be measured.

Of late, the term complication has also been abused by both the ill-informed and by unscrupulous watch brands to include design elements that don’t actually provide an added informative function – this applies especially to tourbillons – but then the Swiss watch industry has always played fast and loose with the English language.

Tourbillons, by not providing information, deserve and belong in a special category, one that could contain other improvements to a watch’s accuracy, such as modifications to the basic technology of a watch movement. The category might also include cutting-edge materials, like the recently-introduced use of silicon for many moving parts (in place of metals)

by Ulysse-Nardin, Omega, Patek Philippe and De Bethune, and carbon fibre watch cases as championed by Audemars Piguet, or it might host radical approaches to displaying the time.

Outlandish displays are a dominant theme among the new wave of watchmakers.

They are not a complication per se because they only show the time and nothing more. Urwerk has built its reputation around watches without conventional dials. Instead, a set of arms – picture the centre of a Mercedes-Benz logo – with rotating end-pieces pointing to an arc

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showing the minutes. HYT’s H1 features luminous green liquid in a circular glass tube to show the hours, while brands like Hautlence have revived and modified the concept of the “regulator” watch, in which the hours and the minutes have separate dials. Harry Winston’s Opus series, the flagship watch line of the revered brand, introduces a radical model every year, designed by a celebrated watchmaker.

Most involve radical display concepts.

There remains, however, an understandable obsession for tourbillons. The pedigree is as noble as can be, the technology having been devised at the end of the 18th century

by Abraham-Louis Breguet – arguably the greatest watchmaker of all time – as a means of compensating for the effects of gravity. At the time, clocks aside, all portable timepieces were pocket watches.

Their accuracy suffered when resting in one position most of the time, usually in the vertical, as in a waistcoat pocket.

Breguet encased the “beating heart of the watch” – the escapement and balance wheel – in a moving cage. The parts most affected by gravity would, in effect, continuously change position in an everrotating cage. “Tourbillon” is French for “whirlwind”: an added benefit was the visual treat of seeing this part in constant movement, as its name suggests. Hence, nearly all tourbillons are visible through the dial, to remind the owner that his or her watch is truly special … and costly.

This, however, raises an issue responsible for one of watchmaking’s more amusing controversies: do tourbillons have any purpose in wristwatches? Because one wears a wristwatch on an extremity, the

The Montblanc Villeret Tourbillon Bi-Cylindrique (above left), the Cartier Rotonde de Cartier Cadran Lové 2 (middle) and JaegerLeCoultre's classic Reverso, in a Mad Men special edition (right), are all so much more than mere timepieces.

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The art of complications

Complications have become a symbol of prowess in top

watch is in constant motion – except, of course, when worn by someone asleep or nearly catatonically supine and inactive.

It is, therefore, defying gravity without the need for a tourbillon.

Others, however, regard tourbillons the way supercar makers obsess about unusable top speeds. The great watch revival of the mid-1980s was peopled with imaginative watchmakers such as Francois-Paul Journe, Roger Dubuis, Daniel Roth, Franck Müller and Christophe Claret, many of whom adored Breguet. They revived the tourbillon and applied it to wristwatches; prior to that, tourbillons in wristwatches were primarily experimental, like a late1940s effort by Omega.

But the new wave wasn’t solely responsible: Girard-Perregaux’s Tourbillon with Three Gold Bridges, inspired by a pocket watch from 1860, appeared as a wristwatch in 1991, and it remains a part of the company’s catalogue. Of late, Cartier – which has embraced haute horlogerie with intense fervour – has been offering fascinating pieces such as the exquisite Rotonde de Cartier Cadran Lové Flying Tourbillon, which positions the key element above the dial for maximum exposure.

Tourbillons became the ne plus ultra of high-end watches, and no brand in the most elevated sector could be taken seriously without a tourbillon in its catalogue: they attest to special watchmaking prowess. Some houses, such as Jean Dunand and Greubel Forsey, specialise in tourbillons. They are too committed to the art even to address the cynicism. At £350 000 and up, so it

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should be. Less expensive tourbillons are offered by Jaeger-LeCoultre, Breguet and others to sate the lust, but the prices are still firmly in the “exclusive” category.

There is, however, an argument to prevent critics from snippy, caustic remarks about the irrelevance of tourbillons.

Christophe Claret is the genius hired by those who wish to have a tourbillon in their catalogues but haven’t the means to produce them. Claret, when challenged about their worth in a wristwatch, prepared two identical wristwatches, one with tourbillon and one without. The former outperformed the latter for sheer, measurable accuracy. And only a fool would argue with Claret.

For purists and pedants, though, complications must refer to functions, and the “Kings of the Hill” are the Minute Repeater and the Perpetual Calendar.

A minute repeater chimes the time in increments from an hour – the simplest type – up to the minute, which is the most complex and desirable. A perpetual calendar adds, to all of the necessary date functions, the phases of the moon and the ability to deal with leap years and other periodic anomalies.

Ultimately, enthusiasts will aspire to the “Grand Complication”, which trumps all others. Opinions differ as to what constitutes a Grand Complication, but one must include, at the very least, three complications, usually a calendar of some sort, a striking repeater (hours, quarters or, best of all, minutes) and a chronograph.

Here we find watch companies, desirous of the title of “world’s most complicated watch”, including in their tallies such non-

watches such as the Villeret Tourbillon (left).

Jaeger-LeCoultre's Hybris Mechanica Grande Sonnerie, Reverso a Tryptique and Gyrotourbillon (above) are all high on complications, as is the Nicolas Rieussec Monopusher Chronograph by Montblanc (below).

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The art of complications

IWC's Portuguese Grande Complication Red Gold Moon Phase Chronograph has nine hands around its striking dial.

complications: 24-hour display; chronograph for measuring short time periods; split-second timing or lap timing; flyback (or rattrapante) chronograph that can be reset while the timer is running; second time zone (or GMT); equation of time (display of solar/ sidereal time, as opposed to standard time); display of multiple time zones; time of sunset or sunrise; Easter date calculators; quarter repeater, five-minute repeater or minute repeater; passing strike (chiming watch); alarm; month display; sign of the zodiac; display of leap year cycle (year 1 to 4), moon phases, mechanised star chart, astrolabe dial; perpetual calendar; annual calendar; week of year; dead second; tourbillon (considered a mechanical refinement rather than a complication by some); time signal processor.

complications as the basic hours, minutes and seconds, or even automatic winding, but the cognoscenti see through this.

All of which points to a recent backlash.

In part, it may be due to paranoia about personal security and a desire or need to be less showy. Another cause might be concerns about servicing costs or reliability (and added complexity most assuredly adds to both). Whatever the rationale, the three excesses of enormous case diameter, bling gems and unusable or unreadable complications have been countered by a return to simplicity.

For the past three or four years, most houses, including Girard-Perregaux, Vacheron Constantin, Patek Philippe, Chopard, IWC and Jaeger-LeCoultre – all of whom are capable of producing any complication you care to name – have been showing minimalist pieces with

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dimensions of around 38-40mm. Hours, minutes, seconds and date, against dials devoid of decoration, all hark back to a time when elegance rather than extravagance defined the sophisticated watch connoisseur.

Indeed, the most notable trend in recent years has been “ultra-thins”, a revival of a 1950s obsession with super-slim pieces, championed by Piaget and others. If the “party piece” of 10 years ago was a Grand Complication festooned with subsidiary dials and pushers and buttons, the most revealing wristwear for the current era is the horological equivalent of a discreet, bespoke suit. If in doubt, a Cartier Tank, a Jaeger-Le Coultre Reverso or a Patek Philippe Calatrava will never let you down. Which explains why the three of them have stayed in production for more than 80 years.

Grand complications: Although there is no official set of requirements, one common definition is a watch that contains at least three complications, with at least one coming from each of the groups listed below. timinG complications: simple chronograph, counter chronograph, split-second flyback chronograph, independent second-hand chronograph, jumping second-hand chronograph. astronomical complications: simple calendar, perpetual calendar, moon phases, equation of time. strikinG complications: alarm, quarterrepeater, half-quarter repeater, five-minute repeater, minute repeater, passing strike.

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Accelerating past British restraint On a roll: Rolls-Royce enjoyed record global sales in 2011, selling nearly 100 cars more than in its previous best year - 1978.

There‘s nothing understated about the latest offerings from iconic British motoring brands. And wealthy South Africans are enthusiastically welcoming this new breed of Brits.

by Adrian Burford

W

hat do Bruce McLaren, Lionel Martin, Henry Royce and Charles Rolls have in common? No, they weren’t all Englishmen (McLaren was a New Zealander), but they were all mad about cars – and today are the human figures behind McLaren Automotive, Aston Martin Lagonda Limited, and Rolls-Royce Motor Cars – a trio of quintessentially British motoring brands that collectively and individually represent the pinnacle of the car maker’s art.

Not just that: together they embrace virtually the entire history of motorised transport. Rolls-Royce traces its roots back to the turn of the previous century, Aston Martin dates to 1913, and McLaren floated his motor racing team almost 50 years ago, building the first roadster to bear his name – the little-known M6GT – at the end of the swinging sixties.

Heritage like this is hard to find.

McLaren’s more recent supercars share some basic themes with the M6: a midengined layout (the guarantee of handling purity and instant reactions to driver commands), an aerodynamically-shaped

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coupe body with “scissor” doors, and the possibility of distinctive McLaren Orange paintwork, now known as Volcano Orange.

Whether they be race cars or road cars, McLarens have always been technological masterpieces. Just one example of this is the company's pioneering work in perfecting the use of carbon fibre – a space-age material previously found only in jet fighters – in single-seater racing cars. Then there was the famous F1 threeseater supercar of the early 1990s: it moved the goalposts and more than two decades on is still regarded as an icon of sports car design.

Now there’s the MP4-12C, a car which taps into both modern technology and established race car design principles – like low weight and exceptional body rigidity – to up the ante again. It begs the question, is there a more complete mid-engined supercar that money (R3.2-million before options) can buy?

The beauty of the MP4 is how it uses electronic control systems to manage the suspension, aerodynamic devices, and driving controls (specifically throttle response and steering feel) to disguise a Jekyll and Hyde personality.

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Accelerating past British restraint

British beef: Aston Martin (above) has been a huge success in South Africa.

Racing colours: The McLaren MP4 (opposite) represents a new kind of supercar, combining a traditional mid-engined layout with modern technology.

One moment you're driving a surprisingly user-friendly car that could, within reason, be used every day. But press two buttons and rotate two switches on that elegant, carbon fibre-finished centre console, and it transforms into a screaming, intenselyfocussed 441kW rocket perfectly at home on the race track.

Unleashed, this car is good for over 320 kilometres per hour. However, it's the astonishing poise and balance it possesses that leaves a lasting impression.

If there’s a shortcoming, it’s the rather dispassionate name. Though that hasn’t hampered local sales – last year about 20 found homes in South Africa, and the allocation for 2012 is another 30-odd.

Aston Martin is very different from McLaren. It’s about brute force, and there are many who’ll argue that tractor entrepreneur Sir David Brown had a far

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greater influence on its modern legacy than its founder, Mr Martin. The second half of the Aston Martin name, by the way, comes from Aston Hill in rural Buckinghamshire, where Martin raced some of his early creations.

Brown purchased Aston Martin in 1947 for the princely sum of £20 500, ending a long period of financial instability and starting the DB line of cars: increasingly powerful, front-engined, rear-drive GT coupes that evolved into the V8 and Vantage models of the 1970s.

By that stage Brown was no longer involved, but a certain Mr Bond – 007 to his friends – continued to choose Aston Martins, as did men who wanted a performance car with a strong personality and more than a touch of the British bulldog to it. The cars were refined but devastatingly fast: real iron fist in velvet glove kind of stuff.

The modern Aston line-up is arguably more exciting than it has ever been, with the latest version of the Vantage highly evolved to offer a mix of sheer grunt, beefy, masculine style and a driving ambience that combines sensory satisfaction with just a hint of traditonal charm.

It’s the Vantage that has put Aston Martin back on the map in recent years, and its action hero head honcho, Dr Ulrich Bez, is a hardcore car guy who races Vantages whenever he can. The urbane designer – Marek Reichmann – is another key person, and has brought the classic Aston coupe proportions into the 21st century. Probably the most powerful manifestation of that – literally and figuratively - is the One-77, a rare (just

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Spirit of Ecstasy: The iconic Rolls-Royce hood orament became standard in the 1920s. Affectionately known as Emily, the winged figure was designed to symbolise the car's graceful, silent speeed.

77 were made) beast of a car powered by a 7.3-litre V12. But maybe it is the DBS, a radical development of the DB9 2+2 and powered by a high-performance engine similar to that of the One-77, that personifies the outrageous undercurrent that is part of the Aston Martin DNA. The arrival of the Rapide, the DB9based four-door, in 2010 has also added to Aston’s broadening appeal. A pukka sportster with the ability to seat four adults in comfort, the Rapide has taken the brand into new territory where the entire family can enjoy the luxury and grand touring ability that comes with this kind of car.

The grandest touring experience in the automotive world, though, still comes from Rolls-Royce, period. Few rivals (are there any?) will argue the point and the vehicle is a byword for handmade excellence and craftmanship, and a synonym for being the best.

In the Ghost and the Phantom there are

two possible routes to motoring nirvana.

The former is a thoroughly modern design and a lighter, more compact car for a changing world – though still hugely imposing. The graceful Phantom is a classic Roller in every sense of the word, measuring almost six metres from bumper to bumper and with enough space inside to throw a decent party – should you so wish.

In the good old days, Rolls-Royce specification sheets would simply list power output as “sufficient” but now the kiloWatt ratings do appear. Both powerplants on offer are V12s, the twinturbo 6.6-litre one fitted to the Ghost almost indecently powerful – especially coupled to a gearbox with no less than eight ratios. So now you can ask James to take you home, and tell him exactly how many horses not to spare…

What hasn’t changed on Rolls-Royce brochures is the term POA (price on application). The term is a politely British way of telling you that, if you have to

ask, you probably can’t afford it. Last year, 3 538 individuals chose to buy a Roller, a record for the brand and nearly 100 cars up on the previous best year: 1978. China was the leading market for sales – though South Africa also enjoyed strong sales in both 2010 and 2011 on the back of the Ghost introduction.

There’s no doubt that the brand is for people who know exactly what they want and are used to getting it, and the Bespoke service aims to satisfy every whim. A four-piece picnic set finished in aluminium, wood veneer and leather?

Certainly, Madam. Luggage to fit your Phantom’s boot perfectly? Indeed, Sir. Depending on the market, up to 90 percent of Phantom buyers will choose something special for their car and lifestyle, with the average an impressive three out of four buyers opting for some sort of customisation. The Bespoke offering includes a wide range of special paint and trim combinations and colours - though Rolls has been known to refuse to provide certain garish combinations that they consider vulgar, irrespective of whom the customer is.

Along with Rolls-Royce, the local rights to McLaren and Aston Martin rest with the Daytona Group, a company with a solid reputation when it comes to handling the automotive world’s premium motoring brands. The three upmarket Brits must be the equivalent of owning a triptych of fine paintings from a grand master – except with these three you can do so much more than just admire them hanging on a wall!

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TRADITIONAL SOUND: New Hartvig turntable n Die-hard anolgue fans will love the TT Signature Turntable handcrafted in Denmark by Hartvig Audio. In true Scandinavian style, its design is beautifully simple and timelessly elegant. But it‘s not just a looker – it offers an incredible reproduction of sound that, unlike its digital counterparts, is smooth, pure and detailed. Precision microprocessors ensure stable rotation and, to further enhance sound quality, there‘s a battery supply system – unlike electricity, batteries create a pitch-black background so there‘s no distortion. There‘s also a choice of wood finishes and arm sizes to suit any home or vinyl collection.

www.hartvigaudio.com

SPECIAL EDITION: Abarth 695 Tributo n Abarth‘s 695 Tributo Maserati

SKIING PLEASURE: Limited-edition BMW skis n BMW has teamed up with

is a customised version of the Fiat

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WRITING STYLE: Montblanc Collodi n New to the Montblanc

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Limited Writers Edition series is the Carlo Collodi, which honours the Italian creator of Pinocchio, with images of the puppet and his fairytale companions featured on the beautiful gold-plated cap. www.montblanc.com

DESIGN AN IDENTITY: Black Astrum business cards n Black Astrum is taking the simple business card to a new designer level. Made mostly from cutting edge materials like carbon fibre, its cards are trimmed with precious metals and studded with diamonds. They can be made to order in any design – and with trimmings to reflect just the right amount of bling for your business.

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Opulent Living Opulent Living finds

DRIVING COMFORT: Aston Martin shoes n Aston Martin has teamed up with luxury footwear brand John

Lobb to produce a lightweight driver‘s shoe. Called Winter Sport, it‘s made from full-grain calfskin lined with supple sheepskin and comes in an array of colours. www.astonmartin.com

DYNAMIC DESIGN: Mercedes-Benz Style collection n Mercedes-Benz has debuted a sleek furniture collection at Milan Design Week. Created in collaboration with the Formitalia Luxury Group, one of Italy‘s leading manufacturers of designer furniture, the MercedesBenz Style collection comprises a sofa, chaise longue, dining table, various chairs, a sideboard, a shelf unit with integrated home theatre system, a chest of drawers and a bed.

www.mercedes-benz.com

FRENCH ARTISTRY: Cartier eyewear collection n Cartier’s latest optical eyewear range, Collection Première Cartier, has a retro-chic feel inspired by the jazzy imagery of the 1930s. Available in a selection of classic shapes, including a chic new round design in tortoiseshell or pure black, the elegant frames from the French luxury brand are crafted entirely from hand-polished acetate, which makes them lightweight and super durable. They're enhanced by discreet details in platinum, gold or ruthenium and the arms feature tubular pistons, pins and flexible integrated hinges.

SPARKLING TIME: Graff diamond watch n Graff London has unveiled a

SMART FORM: Porsche Blackberry n The Porsche Design P´9981

16mm Baby Galaxy ladies watch

Smartphone from BlackBerry®

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technology. With a full keyboard

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equipped for high-speed internet

ruby set at the hour mark. www.graffdiamonds.com

as well as HD video recording.

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STAR WARS: R2D2 in solid silver n To celebrate the 35th anniversary of George Lucas‘ Sci-Fi classic, the Star Wars franchise has released limited-editions of two beloved characters crafted in 35g of solid metal: R2D2 in silver and C-3PO in gold. www.starwars.com

COOL RUNNINGS: VW GTI snow sled n The GTI Crazy Bob sled from Volkswagen Lifestyle is made

NATURAL WARMTH: The versatile Roll Fire n The Roll Fire can move to provide natural heat and beauty

from cold-resistant plastic and

anywhere in the home. Made in Germany, the fireplace literally rolls to

features ergonomic front and rear

wherever you need warmth. It has a heat-resistant, black-felt surface

footrests. Both sides are worked

and the stainless-steel tank containing the biofuel used to power the

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Morukuru Family ∙ South Africa

Time well spent Going on a Morukuru Family safari is therapy. No early morning tempers, no routine, no twisted schedules. Just a beautiful, luxurious home in the African bush, plenty of staff, and no other guests. A place to slow down and just be.

T

ime is a precious commodity; it cannot be made or bought or sold, and yet it is so easily wasted.

When Ed and Anka Zeeman first visited Madikwe Game Reserve almost a decade ago, they felt acutely that every day spent exploring this untrammeled wilderness – dodging the region's notoriously tetchy elephants, tracking wild dog, watching a lioness hunt – was quite simply the best use of time they had experienced in years.

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So they set about finding a tract of land adjoining Madikwe, a place where they could build a home that was European in luxury but African in spirit; a retreat from the hurly burly pace of modern living, where they could slow down and appreciate each other, old friends, family, and the vast humbling expanse of nature.

“We wanted to build a luxurious yet comfortable two-bedroom home overlooking the Marico River, somewhere

to share with our friends and family, but also to enjoy alone if we wanted,” says Ed. “We didn’t just want a huge en-suite bedroom in the bush, but a real home, with a kitchen, a dining room, a lounge and a proper pool. It was important that we not disturb the mature trees, so we built around and under them. We sometimes call it our ‘house in the trees’, but everyone else calls it Owner’s House.”

Ed is clearly as passionate today as he was

Every meal at Morukuru is a special occasion, and guests are invited to dine outdoors under the stars as often as the weather allows. Each villa has its own private chef, and threecourse dinners are tailor-made to suit individual palettes.

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when he designed the “first born” of the Morukuru Family of lodges. The second was designed in tandem. “We knew that we wanted full-time staff to look after the property, so it made sense to build an additional three-bedroom home – near enough to walk to from ours, yet with a completely private location,” he explains.

“We could then share our experience and staff with other visitors to Madikwe who, like us, were looking for a luxurious yet intimate bush home environment in a serious Big Five reserve, rather than yet another safari lodge or hotel experience.

“Bringing families together to experience the African bush has always been the key objective for us, and as the Madikwe game reserve is a completely malariafree region, yet supports a huge variety of species in a typical African bush environment, we realised that it is simply the best destination for the family looking for a great safari.”

The Zeemans were one of the first to identify the growing trend in familycentric safaris. Aside from building a separate children’s room in River Lodge, big enough for four to sleep and romp around in, Morukuru was one of the first to allow children of all ages on game drives – still a rarity.

“Many of our guests are international, and neither they nor their children have ever before experienced the enchantment that is Africa, so it’s important not to separate them. On the other hand, we also understand that some guests come to Morukuru to relax, and can only do this when they know that their children are being well looked after.

“Every child receives an age-appropriate Morukuru Kidz pack, and we have a host of activities just for children: some love casting lion and antelope tracks, others enjoy fishing off the banks of the Molatedi dam, or going on bush walks to look for interesting insects. Little ones enjoy threading African beads into necklaces, or face painting. We try to find something to entertain any age or interest.

“Children are welcome to enjoy meals with their parents – some parents, particularly those who work very long hours, welcome the chance to finally enjoy every meal together. Others want a chance to romance their partners, in which case we will prepare an earlier meal for the children, sometimes ending it with a small bonfire for them to toast marshmallows and stargaze.

The pool is usually the focal point during the heat of the day, so we have lots of

Morukuru lies along the Marico River, bordering Madikwe Game Reserve.

The reserve is home to the Big Five, as well as the rare African wild dog (above). Each villa is served by a safari guide and tracker and guests can choose between family friendly game drives or bush walks.

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pool toys. On the rare occasions that the weather doesn’t play ball we have the villa well stocked with board and card games.

Every villa also has a TV, DVD and Wii; Farm House even has Playstation, so no parent will ever have to fend off the very frustrating ‘What can I do now?’ whine.

“The idea was essentially that when you come into the Morukuru Family, you are entering your own home. A place where you can do whatever you want, whenever you want. There are no rules, no routine, no schedules. It’s a space for families to really just ‘be’, to reconnect and rediscover what it is that binds them.”

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While they knew the idea would work, both Ed and Anka were surprised at just how quickly both River Lodge and Owner’s House, the latter initially intended only for their own use, were being snapped up by families and friends as word-ofmouth spread of the transformative power of spending time together, with no other guests, no other distractions, plenty of facilities and, of course, great staff.

“Each lodge comes with its own team. It's important that the same people stay with you throughout your stay. This way they get to know who you are and what you like, and you are intuitively pampered.

Together they create a holiday experience unlike anything you have had before.”

Other than your personal hostess – who makes sure that every member of the party is comfortable and cared for – guests are attended to by their own butler, a safari guide and his tracker, and a personal chef. A couple of virtually invisible housekeepers complete the picture. All are handpicked by Ed and Anka, but they take particular pride in their chefs.

“I love good food. Last year we sent our head chef, Asion, to Holland to work with the Michelin three-star chef Jonnie Boer,” says Ed. “Asion and Pierre, who is our head of food and beverages, have since been invited to attend the food and wine festival in Delaware, USA, where they hope to learn more from working with other great chefs. Wine is another hobby of mine, and the Morukuru wine cellars are stocked with great South African wines picked up at the Cape Winemakers Guild and Nederburg wine auctions.”

Over the years the Zeeman’s found that a number of larger family groups would book both Owner’s House and River Lodge, but this was not the ideal solution.

What these families really wanted was one big house to romp in.

“We decided to build the five-suite Morukuru Farm House next. We chose a totally different site on the reserve – you have to drive to get to it from River Lodge and Owner’s House, so it’s very private.

The décor and style here is more modern; some have described it as rural African

PhotograPhs: morukuru family

Three sole-use villas offer safari guests an intimate home-from-home experience.

The Lodge (this page) sleeps six adults, while the secluded Farm House (opposite page) accommodates 10 guests of all ages in five large suites.

Morukuru Family

Madikwe Game Reserve, North-West Province, SA Telephone: +27 (0)11 615 4303 Email: info@morukuru.com Website: www.morukuru.com

chic. It has a great lawn that kids love playing football on, and a large pool.

It’s located in a large enough, fencedoff area that you can go jogging, so the whole atmosphere is more open and easy, as opposed to the river properties that are more tucked away. We hope to create something for everyone, and so Farm House is very different. But naturally we love all our Morukuru children equally!”

It’s true that each of the bush villas has its own personality, but what each shares is a generosity that comes directly from the owners' desire to share their joy in spending time in the African bush.

“We are a family, we run Morukuru like a family, and we like old-fashioned family values. We like to think we are bringing generations together – grandparents, parents and children travelling together, reconnecting with one another in their own special Morukuru space and time.

Because family time is the most precious time there is.” n Pippa de Bruyn

The Morukuru Family, comprising three bush villas, is located on a private reserve abutting the malaria-free Madikwe Game Reserve. This game-rich region borders Botswana and is home to the Big Five, as well as many other species. It’s an easy four-hour drive from Johannesburg, or a short flight with Federal or Morukuru Air.

Note: The Zeemans are in the process of creating another Morukuru space, this time in De Hoop Nature Reserve, Western Cape. Morukuru Ocean House will open its doors in July 2013.

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Kurland Hotel ∙ South Africa

The scent of roses An exceptionally stylish farm hotel in The Crags, set in the prettiest rolling hills just outside Plettenberg Bay, Kurland is one of those country estates guests never want to leave. Warmly welcoming of families, holidays here are about pure relaxation with indulgent high teas, gourmet meals and time spent exploring the Garden Route and its beaches, or simply enjoying the rejuvenating country air on the estate with walks, horse rides and spa pampering.

The five-star boutique hotel has just 12 spacious and luxurious suites, each with its own character and style.

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here are hotels and there are really special hotels. Well, so say the new generation of young travellers, who are becoming increasingly discerning on their global journeys. It’s difficult to define, but Kurland’s secret has something to do with the fact that children experience “hotel” life here as they never have before.

It begins with a walk through the original farmhouse with its gleaming yellowwood floors and antiques - with the comforting smell of freshly baked biscuits wafting through the rooms - and continues past crystal vases spilling over with an abundance of freshly picked roses out onto the deep stoep overlooking the pool.

It just feels like home. Perhaps it's because the Behr family, who have run Kurland for years, have well-travelled children of their own. They’ve managed to cultivate a holistic hotel experience that’s utterly relaxing yet spoiling at the same time.

Kurland is a place where families come to reconnect, and where the ultimate luxury is space. Here there are not only 700 hectares of farmland to enjoy (also home to well-groomed polo ponies) but the 12 ultra-luxurious suites have to be some of the most generously proportioned in the world, all equally cocooning, comfortable and cosy, especially in winter.

For kids, the adventure begins with a journey upstairs into the lofts, each

one beautifully designed in miniature proportions of the gracious suite below – right down to the mini four poster beds. The beautiful Cath Kidston fabrics, quality linen and thoughtful touches are a complete thrill for little people, giving them their own special holiday experience, but still affording parents privacy in their suite downstairs.

Kurland is also one of those special places where honeymooners revel in the romance of country life, where time stands still and simply allows them to be.

A five-star boutique hotel, and a member of the Relais & Châteaux association, it’s family owned and run, which guarantees personal attention to detail. But it’s the

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Kurland is the ideal place to do very little but relax around the pool, or head out for a walk or horse ride around the estate in the late afternoon light.

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warm welcome and wonderfully friendly staff who second guess every need that make the experience truly extraordinary.

Unlike most hotels, guests are invited into the kitchen to taste the just-baked biscuits that smell so delicious while they’re still warm from the oven. And award-winning Executive Chef, Leon Coetzee, whose beaming smile never fails to enchant kids, will invite guests to walk with him in his prized organic kitchen garden, where pea tendrils are lovingly cultivated to garnish dinner plates and unusual varieties of vegetables and herbs flourish under his care.

It goes without saying that an intimate dinner in his restaurant in the original Homestead is a bespoke culinary journey.

As dusk falls, hyacinth-scented candles flicker throughout, tables are laid with crystal, silver and elegant rose blooms.

The Café Complet serves delicious pastries and cakes for a high tea at any time of day, while at the new Katarina's bistro

the menu is wonderfully varied and light, perfect for lunches if just back from the beach. During season, it’s a popular gathering place for friends and families staying in nearby Plett.

Added to these dining experiences is a multiple-award-winning wine list for anyone who is passionate about wine, but there are also food and wine tasting opportunities at the intimate Chef’s Table.

There is so much to do - or not, of course – at Kurland, including making use of the first class equestrian facilities on the estate. Well known for its polo events at the Kurland Polo Pavilion (also a magical venue for weddings), there’s a magnificent stable of horses – and there’s nothing quite like a ride on a muscular and beautifully groomed polo horse. As you ride towards the indigenous forest, you will spot Kurland Villa, also available as an exclusive-use option on the estate.

For those in the mood for some quiet time, the tranquil spa uses Dr Hauschka

PhotograPhs: kurland hotel, andrew brown

Masses of deeply scented roses bloom in the garden in summer, making it an especially beautiful venue for weddings, while roaring fires in the suites are a part of the ritual on cooler days.

products for its wonderfully pampering treatments. Energetic guests can enjoy mountain biking and quad bikes rides, while younger guests do pony rides, swim, play tennis, enjoy nature walks, hikes, picnics, cricket, croquet, cooking or arts and craft classes – all under the watchful eye of the warm-hearted Kurland team.

Nearby, Nature’s Valley offers swimming in its lagoon or at the sea, and coastal walks to the Salt River estuary are a highlight. For those who enjoy adventure sports, there are some adrenalin-pumping options, such as bungee jumping off the Bloukrans River Bridge or canopy tours of the Tsitsikamma Forest near Storms River. Or perhaps a round or two of golf is in order?

But at the end of the day, there’s nothing quite like returning to the estate at sundown and sharing experiences over a glass of fine Cape wine while the horses graze peacefully in the paddocks below. n Michelle Snaddon

kurland hotel

the Crags, western Cape, sa telephone: +27 (0)44 534 8082 email: info@kurland.co.za website: www.kurland.co.za kurland is an easy 20-minute drive from Plettenberg bay.

Silver, crystal and roses are all part of the romance of dinner in the original homestead, where guests love to linger and enjoy Chef Leon Coetzee's delicious menu.

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Frégate Island Private ∙ Seychelles

A gem quite out of this world This eco-retreat in the Indian Ocean is a bounty of natural riches and luxury offerings. But its true brilliance lies in its total seclusion on an exclusive private island. Add the polish of first-class service, where nothing is too much trouble, and you've got something precious indeed.

Frégate's 17 villas are tucked into forested cliffs above the beach, affording guests the luxury of privacy in a pristine natural setting.

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F

Conservation is key and there are programmes in place to protect endangered species such as the magpie robin (top), the hawksbill turtle (middle) and the Aldabra giant tortoise (bottom).

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rom the air, Frégate appears as a gleaming emerald island set in a sea of clear turquoise. Almost as if a sky god sprinkled giant gems from above to adorn the languid ocean. And when you come in to land by helicopter – as most guests do – it soon becomes apparent that this unique island is not just any precious stone, but a rare gem indeed.

First, there’s the wonderful sense of seclusion – of feeling as if you’ve left the world behind. In fact, Frégate is so tucked away that, in centuries past, pirates sought shelter here. The island provided them with everything they needed: fresh water, plentiful food and a hideaway far from prying eyes. Now this sense of privacy attracts modern-day castaways, who come looking for barefoot luxury and exclusivity. And with just 16 villas and one Presidential Villa accommodating only a select number of guests, that is exactly what they get.

Then, of course, there’s the island’s motto of “anything, anywhere, anytime”, made possible by round-the-clock private butlers who deliver slick, personal service.

Whatever you can dream of, you can have.

Feel like Beluga caviar? Your favourite vintage champagne? Consider it done.

Frégate Island Private Managing Director Paul van Frank and his team will source it and have it flown in for your enjoyment.

This is definitely an island that’s a cut above. It’s no wonder that guests return again and again.

And if that’s not enough to make you covet a stay, then there’s the clarity of the ocean, the powdery white beaches and the verdant, tropical interior. For this is an island of outstanding natural beauty – and its owners are determined to keep it that way. The protection and preservation of its unique flora and fauna are its fundamental raison d’être – and means guests can experience its rare bounty in all its exuberant colour.

The spacious villas, built from native mahogany and clad in African teak, have been carefully constructed to blend into their natural surroundings and guarantee guests ultimate privacy. Each blissful retreat has a fresh, tropical feel that’s

intentionally casual, but also reflects the island’s diverse colonial heritage.

In contrast to the vibrant blues and greens of their setting, rooms are decorated in soothing earth tones, with elegant, classic pieces that ensure an atmosphere of perfect calm. Marble floors and vaulted ceilings assist with natural temperature control during the balmy summers, though suites do have fans and air-conditioning too.

Each villa has also been positioned to maximise ocean views through two facades. On the wide terrace, which flows out as an extension of the living area, a private infinity pool blurs the line between sea and sky to create a neverending horizon. There’s also a Jacuzzi, and comfy loungers that provide just the spot for indulgent afternoon naps.

If you prefer the soft white sand of the beach, well, there are seven to choose between. Anse Victorin with its pure white sand fringed by palm trees was last year voted Best Beach in the World

by German travel magazine, Traveller’s World. Anse Macquereau, meanwhile, comes with a do-not-disturb sign. Framed by granite boulders, it’s big enough just for two. Turn the sign at the entrance to “occupied” and you’ll have the shaded loungers just to yourself. Nobody will enter, bar the butler delivering drinks or food on your request.

After a lazy lunch on the beach, head to the Rock Spa for a blissful massage.

Perched on the top of a cliff, and designed around natural rock features, the setting is nothing short of spectacular. As well as the far-reaching views, there’s the background music of cascading water from the freshwater pools and waterfalls surrounding the venue.

The treatments themselves use only pure, natural products – prepared in the on-site apothecary by Madame Dibwa. Drawing on her knowledge of aromatherapy and herbalism, she and her team create scrubs, pastes and oils from seasonal island-grown ingredients, and free from any chemical or artificial ingredients.

It reflects the principle of “fresh is best” that informs everything on the island.

Guest villas are private and spacious, and built to maximise the forest and oceanside setting.

Interiors lead seamlessly onto large terraces, each with it’s own infinity pool and Jacuzzi.

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Whether you're dining on the beach, or surrounded by forest in the tree house, meals are gourmet offerings prepared using only the freshest local ingredients.

Fish is caught fresh every day, and a rich abundance of fruit and vegetables are grown on site.

Whatever’s in season influences the gourmet menu at Frégate House, where guests dine on a wide terrace that offers breathtaking views. For even more local flavour, there’s Plantation House. The former home of the island’s plantation manager, the historical building is a museum by day – but at night transforms into a romantic venue serving Creole specialities. Though many guests never make it to these venues – choosing rather to be served in the privacy of their villa.

For lunch, the options are just as varied.

Choose a picnic or barbecue on the beach, or the adventure of being served in a tree house, high in a banyan tree, serenaded by birdsong. Or how about sitting down at the Garden Table? Though first you’ll need to accompany the chef through the garden to pick the vegetables and herbs which will form part of your lunch.

Fresher food is impossible! And don’t miss afternoon tea in the special Tea House, with its views over the entire island.

Conservation is another theme that will inform your stay here. Two full-time conservationists ensure that local flora

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and fauna is preserved and protected. One of their programmes looks after the rare magpie robin, of which there are only 240 left in the world. Another takes care of the giant Aldabra tortoises – and gives guests the opportunity to adopt a tortoise for life. Native to the Seychelles, they’re the heaviest tortoises on earth, with males weighing up to 250 kilograms.

A very special wildlife attraction are green and hawksbill turtles. Turtles born on Frégate’s Grand Anse return year after year to continue the cycle of life. From October, they crawl up onto the beach to lay their eggs, and babies hatch in January or February – when guests can watch freshly hatched, tiny turtles make a mad dash for the ocean, where they bob out to sea to start their lives.

There’s also the Frégate Island Ecological Programme that seeks to repair the damage caused by 200 years of extensive coconut and cinnamon monoculture.

A large nursery is slowly propagating indigenous plants and trees with which to rehabilitate the landscape. For while palm trees may give the island an authentic tropical feel, they’re not actually native to these shores. What are local, though, are three remaining coco de mer trees –

Deep-sea game fishing is a popular activity, as is scuba diving in the warm, tropical waters off the island.

Frégate Island Private

PHoTogrAPHS: FrEgATE ISLAnd PrIvATE

Frégate, SEYCHELLES Telephone: +27 (0)21 556 9984 Email: reservations@fregate.com Website: www.fregate.com

the erotic shape of their fruit making for some colourful local legends.

Truly legendary, though, is the fishing, with deep-sea expeditions to reel in yellow-fin tuna, dorado, wahoo, sailfish, marlin and even billfish. Other popular sea-based activities include snorkelling, scuba diving, windsurfing, waterskiing, sailing and wake boarding.

On terra firma, it’s easy to explore the magnificent landscape on winding nature trails and mountain bike tracks. There’s

plenty to entertain children, too – from survival courses and treasure hunts, through beach parties and stargazing outings, to fishing trips that end after the catch is cooked and eaten.

For couples or families looking for uninterrupted time together in a setting that celebrates nature’s bounty, Frégate is a rare jewel indeed. And the final polish is the unparalleled service that ensures here, in this world away from the world, everything is possible. n Keri Harvey

Frégate lies just four degrees south of the Equator and is one of more than 100 islands that together make up the Seychelles. It is a 20-minute flight by helicopter from Seychelles International Airport on Mahé, the largest of the country‘s islands.

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The Orient Boutique Hotel ∙ South Africa

An enthralling encounter in an exotic fantasy world Just to the west of Pretoria lies a five-star boutique hotel that's not quite of Africa. It's a little bit Arabian, a little bit Indian – and a whole lot of exotic.

From Moorish battlements and Turkish minarets, to lavish suites fashioned like Rajashtan palaces, it invites guests to step out of reality for just a moment. It's all about escapist fun, about being treated like royalty, and about indulging in good food and wine in a quite corner of nature. In short, it's The Orient.

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t’s all about the extraordinary when visiting The Orient Boutique Hotel. Hidden in the Crocodile River Valley on the periphery of Pretoria, it's close enough to Johannesburg to slip across for a romantic night away to catch the exquisite spectacle of an African sunset from its elevated turrets.

Travelling from either city, the first sight of The Orient is as unexpected as it is spectacular. A Moorish-inspired palace that looks as if it's been blown in from the Sahara Desert, it's not quite the norm in the Crocodile River Valley.

This is a destination that transports you to the opulent lifestyle of the Maharajas,

to a time long forgotten. From the road, you're tantalised with glimpses of the exotic facade, until the full magnificence of the architecture reveals itself before you. A crenellated wall runs up and down the valley, enclosing the property as if it were a medieval hill town. Enter through what feels like an ancient gateway and there's nothing to dispel the myth that you've landed in another country.

Cross the threshold and you'll be met by lavish interiors, decorated with pieces collected by the owners over 25 years of travelling the world. There's also an abundance of dramatic contemporary art by both local and international

artists and sculptors. Adriaan Boshoff, Gregoire Boonzaaier, Alexander RoseInnes, Frans Oerder, Hennie Niemann and Tienie Pritchard are just some of the masters on display.

Before you know it, you'll be whisked off to one of 10 individually decorated suites, each one more ravishing in exotic colour and imagination. There's the Constantinople Suite, modelled on an Ottoman palace; the Marrakesh Suite, filled with the spicy shades of a buzzing North African souk; and the Kashmir and Ninevah Suites, with their harem beds and embroidered silks. Even the books come from the oriental destinations

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Rich fabrics and carved wooden furniture collected from around the world make for sumptuous interiors that are anything but ordinary.

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the rooms are named after. Vibrant colours and contrasting textures as well as secret views, nooks and crannies all combine to create the perfect hideaway.

It’s unashamedly indulgent, a little taste of paradise.

The best time to fully appreciate it, preferably with a glass of Champagne in hand, is late afternoon – just before magical sunsets paint the sky the same exotic oranges and reds as the plush fabrics in your regal suite.

The hotel sits in the 280-hectare Francolin Conservancy, so there's nothing to distract you from the beauty that nature has to offer.

To the north are the Magaliesberg mountains, where sheer quartzite cliffs border the wide valley, home to waterfalls and streams that spill from the heart of the mountain during the rainy season. Buck have been re-introduced to the area, and you may spot nyala, impala and steenbuck in the surrounding veld, as well as zebra and wildebeest.

Walk through the bush and you'll catch glimpses of shy duiker, troops of vervet monkeys or even a few ground squirrels.

The Crocodile River Valley is also a favourite spot for bird watchers, who come for sightings of the 280 species that have been recorded in the area.

As you watch the sun descend, keep an eye out for black eagles and jackal buzzards circling high above. In winter, flowering aloes attract myriads of brilliantly coloured sunbirds, and in summer migrating storks can be seen in the fields.

It's all part of the joy of being taken out of your normal, everyday world – even if just for a day or two.

Extend the illusion with a classic movie in the intimate 20-seater cinema, the Petit Alhambra, where rich velvet curtains and upholstered seating provide a sense of pure opulence.

And then there's dining in the awardwinning restaurant. One of the main attractions of this exotic destination, Restaurant Mosaic appears regularly in lists of top South African restaurants, and chef Chantel Dartnall was named

Eat Out Chef of the Year in 2010.

Although still young, she has established her own signature with dishes that make the botanical treasures of the surrounding conservancy part of the taste experience.

Chantel trained in Michelin three-star restaurants under top chefs, such as Nico Ladenis of Chez Nico at 90 Park Lane, London, and Michael Caines of Gidleigh Park in Devon. She draws her inspiration from fresh, seasonal produce to create delicate but daring dishes – all visual feasts as well as taste explosions, because Chantel believes food should taste as good as it looks.

Her restaurant is just as beautiful.

Decorated in the Belle Epoque style, it has an intimate feel with booth-type seats and two private dining rooms. Here you can feast on her menu in style, while staff ensure your glass is always full.

At The Orient, it's all about living for the moment. Who could wish for a more indulgent moment. n Diane de Beer

The Orient Boutique Hotel

Crocodile River Valley, Pretoria, SA Telephone: +27 (0)12 371 2902/3/4/5 Email: mari@the-orient.net Website: www.the-orient.net The five-star hotel is set in the Francolin Conservancy and is an easy drive from both Johannesburg and Pretoria.

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The Lion's Suite sits on a large wooden platform overlooking the river, its copper tub offering unparalled bathtime views.

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The Retreat Selous ∙ Tanzania

Absolute seclusion At this remote retreat guests are soothed by a vast wilderness – the bush and meandering river as unspoiled as they were when European explorers first came across their natural treasures. Though modern-day adventurers to this pristine corner of Tanzania can look forward to a lot more in the way of comfort, with hand-crafted details and attentive staff creating an exquisite African hideaway.

T

he balmy silence is broken only by languorous ripples from the Great Ruaha River, the hippos now silent in the warmth of the afternoon.

Relaxing in a private plunge pool in one of the Retreat’s riverside suites, it’s easy to let the pace slow and the cares of a frenetic life slip away.

This area of south-central Tanzania is so remote that the bush is untouched, a rare intact eco-system, the animals truly wild, nature a rough diamond. It’s part

of the Selous Game Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and, at 55 000 square kilometres, the largest protected wildlife sanctuary in Africa. It’s variety of vegetation zones, ranging from dense thickets to open wooded grasslands, support a rich diversity of wildlife. Here you’ll find lion, elephant, black rhino, buffalo, leopard, cheetah, wild dog, giraffe … the full list is too long to mention!

The Swiss owners of The Retreat have been passionate about this vast wilderness

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Both the West Tower and the upstairs terrace offer unparalled views over the river and the vast Selous wilderness, home to elephants, lion, black rhino, leopard, wild dog, giraffe, hippo and more than 400 different bird species.

ever since they first discovered it 30 years ago. They wanted to share the authentic wildlife experience it offers with others – and waited 15 years to get a concession.

When they did, they crossed Selous for several weeks until they found the perfect place – a hill with the remains of a World War One observation point, and panoramic views over the Great Ruaha River.

Tanzania’s colourful history on the East African trading route is immediately apparent in The Retreat’s architecture and décor. The main lodge, a clay fort perched strategically on the hill, looks as if it has always been there. Its a melting pot of

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influences: from the souks of North Africa to the dark woods of Zanzibar. Antiques from the early 20th-century colonial era mingle with intricate local carvings and designs. Lookout towers provide stunning views and are shaded with canvas to make the perfect area for sundowners.

An infinity pool melds dramatically into the river below, surrounded by loungers tempting one to lazy afternoons.

The tented suites are canvas palaces with six-metre-high ceilings draped in swathes of fabric. The beds, their posts carved in the form of men and women, are initiation beds given to the owners by the Makonde

tribe. In the bathroom you’ll find glowing bronze and copper tubs, basins carved from amethyst or tiger’s eye, and rainbow sandstone shower bases. Every detail has been thoughtfully crafted in natural materials by the best artisans.

Six large suites spread over the hillside around the fort, ideal for those who like the convenience and conviviality of being close to the lodge, then three riverside suites lie further afield, with their own plunge pools and a shared swimming pool and dining area. For total seclusion and absolute exclusivity, Hippo Point, two kilometres from the lodge, has its own

Hippo Point (below and far right) has two large suites – each set on a raised platform with a private plunge pool – situated on either side of an infinity pool. The Senses to Africa Spa (right) enjoys an enchanting position on the river bank.

cook, butler, game vehicle and guide. King of the jungle is the palatial Lion’s Suite that sits on a platform over the river.

With a large lounge and dining area, an extensive deck and private plunge pool, it’s top choice for honeymooners or for small families looking for privacy.

Service here is friendly and accomplished.

Most of the staff comes from the villages around the reserve, trained with the help of a Swiss hospitality programme to bring new skills to the community.

The philosophy is for each guest to find the right Africa for them, so passionate and experienced guides will help you tailor-make experiences. Perhaps a game drive in the morning and a boat safari in the afternoon, or a walking safari followed by a spot of line fishing?

Then there’s the option of heading even deeper into the bush, and spending a night in either a fly camp or the love nest – a tree-top hideaway where a private dinner

is cooked and served before you retire to an unforgettable night under the stars.

A massage at the outdoor spa on the bank of the Great Ruaha, accompanied by birdsong and the sounds of the river, sets the final seal on this deep experience of nature. All in all, The Retreat offers a truly relaxing immersion in the wilderness, holistic in the true sense of engaging with all aspects of a place – and gaining a deep sense of its soul. n Kit Heathcock

Retreat Selous

Selous Game Reserve, Tanzania Telephone: +27 (0)21 556 9984 Email: welcome@retreat-africa.com Website: www.retreat-africa.com

PhoToGRaPhS: ThE RETREaT SElouS

The Retreat is situated 200 kilometres south-west of Dar es Salaam. it‘s a 45-minute flight from the Tanzanian capital to the nearby Simbazi airstrip, and then a 30-minute drive to the lodge. it sits in a remote northern section of the Selous Game Reserve, the largest protected wilderness in africa, and regarded by many as the most pristine on the continent.

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Stately living Hyde Park, Johannesburg n For more information contact

This Hyde Park mansion designed by Franz Jesche Architects in 1995 has recently undergone

Corinna Lowry: +27 (0)82 652 8891

a complete renovation. Today, a beautiful wrought-iron gate leads guests up to the elegant

sandhurst@seeff.com

porte-cochère with extensive parking on either side for executive entertaining.

George Papadopoulos: +27 (0)84 454 1834 sandhurst@seeff.com SEEFF SANDTON

Double doors lead to a generously proportioned marble entrance, with a double-volume ceiling drawing the eye beyond the chandelier to the staircase leading to an interior landing above. The

Telephone: +27 (0)11 784 1222

formal living room, with its gleaming wooden floors, handcrafted ceilings and Adam-style fireplace,

Asking price: R25 million

flows through double doors to the elegant dining room on one side, and to the family room on the other. All the reception rooms open out onto the patio and garden – creating an extensive entertainment area for all seasons. Also on the ground floor is a wood-panelled study fitted with bookshelves and cupboards, as well as a guest suite that has direct access to the landscaped garden.

The spacious kitchen has been fitted with Caesarstone counters and maple units, with a new oven and hob plus a central island. There is also a pantry, separate scullery and laundry. Upstairs, two large bedrooms with en suite bathrooms and dressing rooms open onto their own balconies with views of the garden and surrounding trees in this mature suburb. Two further en suite bedrooms open onto the central landing. Leading off this area is a second study as well as linen cupboards.

Set on an acre in a discreet cul-de-sac in exclusive Hyde Park, the property has a sparkling pool and fountain and newly installed automated irrigation for the garden. During its extensive renovation, everything from the roofing to the electrical wiring and plumbing was redone.

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This modern home is designed to maximise its far-reaching views. Its spacious living areas flow seamlessly outdoors for easy inside-outside living.

Architectural style Northcliff Hill, Johannesburg Designed by Louis Louw Johan Bergenthuin Architects, one of Johannesburg’s most renowned architectural firms, this magnificent home set in an indigenous garden takes full advantage of the stunning views from its position on the northern slope of Northcliff Hill. Owner and architect worked together to achieve excellent flow and to maximise the outlook through its floor-to-ceiling windows. The view takes in the familiar outline of the Magaliesberg mountains in the far distance and the breathtaking sunsets for which Northcliff is famed.

Entertaining is a dream, with visitors welcomed into a central, double-volume entrance hall that leads directly through to the light and airy living areas. The glass-lined lounge and family room flow out to a stunning covered patio, with a built-in barbecue area and rim-flow pool. Sundowners are a tradition here as the lights of the city begin to twinkle among the trees below. Relaxed evenings are spent at the spacious thatched lapa with its own viewing deck set in the garden below.

n For more information contact

Perfect as a family home, it has four bedrooms upstairs connected by a gallery overlooking the

Norah Whittingham-Jones:

entrance hall. The main bedroom leads to a large dressing room and private balcony. This area is linked to a private study, ideal for executive couples. Underfloor heating, quality finishes and good proportions are evident throughout. In addition, a generous guest suite overlooks the garden.

+27 (0)83 628 5290 norah.wj@seeff.com Cynthia Todd: +27 (0)82 781 4404 cynthia.todd@seeff.com SeeFF RaNdbuRg

Northcliff is a quiet, affluent suburb with easy access to Sandton and the CBD, as well as to private

Telephone: +27 (0)11 476 3536

schools. This property has three garages and excellent security. The stand of 4 409m2 is subdivisible.

asking price: R9 950 million

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To the manor born Upper Constantia, Cape Town Previously owned by Earl Spencer and often visited by the late Princess Diana, Tarrystone House is a unique 4 750m² estate with sweeping views out towards False Bay. The graciously proportioned double-storey thatched house (1 100m²) has been fully renovated. The living rooms all have high ceilings, imported chandeliers and fireplaces, while a fully fitted media room, library, spacious dining room, wine cellar, bar and what’s known as the Great Room all allow for easy family living or entertaining on a grand scale, as do the two kitchens, one finished in solid oak with integrated Gaggenau appliances.

The elegantly panelled main bedroom suite includes a dressing room, reading area, a spacious bathroom with a steam shower and French cupboards. A mahogany-and-leather furnished study offers privacy, while three additional luxury guest suites all have elegantly fitted dressing rooms, feature fireplaces and television sets, and offer full en suite bathrooms complete with underfloor n For more information contact

heating and heated towel rails.

Shelley Kruger: +27(0)83 700 9001

Also on the property are three guest cottages and two staff cottages, one of which includes an

shelley@seeff.com

estate manager’s office. All have en suite bathrooms, living and dining areas and fully equipped

Jenny Williams: +27 (0)83 656 6811

kitchens. On the upper level of one of the cottages is a picturesque guest suite – used by Princess

jenny.williams@seeff.com

Diana when she visited – with an en suite bathroom and kitchenette.

Lana Redman: +27 (0)82 396 6822

Two vineyards border the serene garden, which has a river running through it. The sweeping

lana.redman@seeff.com Marie Durr: +27(0)83 269 8608 marie.durr@seeff.com

lawns can accommodate marquees for outdoor events and banquets with ease, and there‘s also a tennis court, gym, swimming pool and Koi pond.

SEEFF SOUTHERN SUBURBS

A Creston computerised management system controls lighting, sound, heating, air-conditioning,

Telephone: +27 (0)21 794 5252

irrigation (borehole water available), access and high-end security for state-of-the-art automation

Asking price: POA

and absolute peace of mind.

This beautifully finished executive apartment sits right on the ocean, with floor-to-ceiling glass doors that fold back to give an easy indoor-outdoor flow.

Coastal glamour Bantry Bay, Cape Town Ultra-luxurious and in the best location – on the ocean side of Victoria Road – this 600m2 apartment is set in one of the most wind-free positions on this sought-after coastline. Perched right on the Atlantic and with mesmerising views, the property offers a lifestyle comparable to the best in the world, with all the attractions of Cape Town close by. There's everything and more in this executive home, but perhaps most rewarding is the fact that the private swimming pool and covered terrace offers outdoor space so close to the sea, yet so protected.

Fronted by glass, there are magnificent sea views from every room in the apartment, which is light, airy and tranquil. Recently renovated with quality finishes, its understated yet plush interiors are beautifully conceived in neutral shades of cream mixed with wood, leather and a dash of navy. The sleek kitchen is a study in concealed storage and clever space management, and has top-end Miele and Gaggenau appliances. Bathroom finishes and fittings are also of superior quality. The contemporary space includes an open-plan living area, dining room, a relaxing zone, a fitted bar and climate-controlled wine cellar and tasting room.

Each of the three luxurious bedroom suites is private, with the larger main bedroom featuring

n For more information contact

its own lounge, dressing room, gas fireplace and deck access. Two guest cloakrooms complete

Adrian Mauerberger: +27 (0)82 826 6454

the fully furnished apartment, which also has underfloor heating and air-conditioning for added comfort in all seasons.

The Bantry offers exclusive and secure living for discerning buyers looking for outstanding

adrian@seeff.com Lance Cohen: +27 (0)82 416 6103 lance@seeff.com SEEFF ATLANTIC SEABOARD

location and privacy. It has the added benefits of a concierge service, direct lift access and four

Telephone: +27 (0)21 434 9175

parking spaces plus two storerooms in the basement.

Asking price: R45 million

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Fine living – and giving The 2012 Summer Charity Auction, hosted by Opulent Living Magazine and The Carla Antoni Collection in Cape Town in March, proved to be a glittering affair – and its 12 exquisite lots raised R775 000 for charity.

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t was a beautiful summer's evening when 155 guests gathered at the striking Bantry Bay home of top Cape Town architect Stefan Antoni and his wife Carla, curator of The Carla Antoni Collection.

The occasion? The 2012 Summer Charity Auction, and the chance to bid on a selection of fine art, luxury goods and exclusive experiences.

The black-tie, invitation-only event – hosted by Barbara Lenhard, publisher of Opulent Living Magazine, and Carla – was also an opportunity to support three charitable causes: The Lunchbox Fund, which provides a daily meal to

impoverished high-school children; The Endangered Wildlife Trust's Rhino Security Project; and the Nelson Mandela Foundation's 46664 Campaign.

Fine Brandy. By Design generously sponsored the evening. “We are proud to be associated with an event that celebrates such fine beauty and the gift of giving,” said brand manager, Caroline Sanders.

Grand Africa provided a sit-down dinner, while Hamilton Russell Vineyards kept glasses well filled with its fine wines.

When auctioneer Ariella Kuper brought down the final gavel and MC Ursula Chikane wrapped up the evening, a total of R775 000 had been raised.

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Images by Jean-Pierre Uys of Jean-Pierre Uys Photography and Martene Rosenbaum of Gypsy Design

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[01] Amy Kleinhans and Jade Fairbrother. [02] Igor Tulevski, Anne-Marie Baalbergen, Craig Port, Sierk Baalbergen and Errol Arendz.

[03] Michael and Androulla Georgiou, Jeannine and Dimitri Tyropolis.

[04] Barbara Lenhard and Florian Gast of Opulent Living Magazine. [05] The beautiful Bantry Bay home of architect Stefan Antoni provided a magical setting for the 2012 Summer Charity Auction.

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[06] Damon and Karryn Cartoulis. [07] Carla Antoni of The Carla Antoni Collection and Alastair McArthur. [08] MayMarie Laurens, Clare Wiese and Tanja Mackay-Davidson.

[09] Urusla Erhardt, HRH Chief Nkosi Zwelivelile Mandela, HRH Nkosikazi Nodiyala Mandela and Dr Lothar Erhardt. [10] Auctioneer Ariella Kuper. [11] Charles Coetzee, Sang Fung, Michael Oldfield, Theo Otten and Gary Lutar. [12] Caroline Sanders of Fine Brandy. By Design.

[13] Sam Greyvenstein and Justin Divaris. [14] Elana Afrika, Pam Golding and Sally Little.

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Barbara Lenhard and Carla Antoni drew together 12 luxury lots for the 2012 Summer Charity Auction. Star of the show was Refigure 1 by sculptor Anton Smit, which fetched a whopping R200 000.

Siren #8, a painting by his son Lionel Smit, fetched R165 000. Backdrop Elements by Paul du Toit and a limited-edition signed print from German photographer Florian Wagner also attracted keen bids.

Another highlight was Lot #10: Dinner for 12 – hosted by Barbara and prepared

by Grand Chef Peter Tempelhoff of The Cellars-Hohenhort, with fine wines from Hamilton Russell – went for R70 000.

Golf with Sally Little at Steenberg, a VIP package to the Gary Player Invitational, a 46664 Platinum Bangle, a signed book

by Michael Poliza, bespoke perfume by Tammy Frazer in a David Reade flacon, work by Ardmore Ceramics and a stunning Van Deijl neckpiece were some of the other unique lots up for grabs.

LUX* Island Resorts also brought a lastminute lot to the sale: five nights in Reunion. Michael Tollman of Thompson, SA tour operatior for LUX*, handed over a voucher to a very pleased winning bidder.

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The 2012 SUMMER CHARITY AUCTION was made possible by the generous support of its sponsors and donators. A big thank you to:

Title sponsor: Fine Brandy. By Design.

Sponsors: Grand Africa, Julie Killias Design, Hamilton Russell Vineyards, Avis Luxury Cars, Royal African Travel, LUX* Island Resorts.

Donators: Paul du Toit, 46664 Bangle Campaign, Michael Poliza & teNeues, Sally Little, Steenberg Estate, Anton Smit, Lionel Smit, Florian Wagner, Tammy Frazer, David Reade, Black Knight International, Van Deijl Jewellers, The CellarsHohenort, Hamilton Russell Vineyards, Opulent Living Magazine, Ardmore Ceramic Art.

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[15] Reni Folawiyo and Denise Dogon.

[16] Sue Main of Grand Africa and Gary Marischa. [17] Ely and Tina Aponte.

[18] Stefan Antoni and Tunde Folawiyo.

[19] Johan Greeff and Kimberley Jackson.

[20] Ursula and Abbey Chikane. [21] Artist Lionel Smit, Barbara Lenhard, Roelien Smit, sculptor Anton Smit and Vasti Smit.

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In celebration of grapes Wine lovers from across South Africa gathered at Waterford Estate in Stellenbosch in February to help celebrate its annual Harvest Festival.

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uests gathered early on the last Saturday in February, heading into the Waterford vineyards to pick the 2012 crop before returning for a fun but messy stomping of the fruit.

“It's been an annual tradition since we opened in 2000”, says winemaker Kevin Arnold. “Jeremy and Leigh Ord, the estate's owners, are based in Johannesburg, so it's

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an excuse to all get together and celebrate on the farm in traditional old-world style.”

More guests arrived later for high tea, followed by an unplugged performance

by Watershed. Then it was time for dinner, music from Zero, and plenty of dancing.

And the harvest? “There's less fruit this year, but better,” says Kevin. A cause for celebration indeed.

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[01] Quirky touches set the scene for a fun day. [02] Vanessa Oertle, Wendy Appelbaum, Theresa and Allan Mullins, Ivan Oertle, Sarah Baker and Andrew Rosettenstein. [03] Rich Laburn, Philippa Stewart, Mike Rowlinson and Shannon Smuts.

[04] Kevin and Heather Arnold of Waterford Estate with Gaye Davies. [05] Watershed enertained guests. [06] Kate, Jeremey and Leigh Ord of Waterford Estate. [07] Diane Lines, Adrian Lane, Marijka Taylor and Lynn Lane. [08] Jeff Grier with Barbara Lenhard and Florian Gast of Opulent Living.

[09] Scotty Rattray with Boyd, Shan and Bronwyn Varty.

[10] AB Catererers provided the food.

www.opulentliving.co.za