Review: Kateka, South Africa

Kateka has taken a concept nobody asked for and sprinted with it: safari meets wellness retreat.  And I respect the commitment.  Why fly halfway around the world to look at animals when you could stare at a wooden floor while someone realigns your chakras?  Then get annoyed when an elephant walks past and ruins the moment.

Ok, I confess, I was genuinely interested in the idea.  Which goes some way to explaining why I paid to come here.  Which is logical, cos otherwise I’m saying I came here against my own will, which would make for a really different kind of review.

Getting there

I arrived from Masiya’s Camp, a mere 90-minute drive.  That’s one of the perks of the Greater Kruger area: there are so, so many lodges that you can hop between them without having to board yet another plane.  Even with charter flights, it’s often a pain, as you need to show up early and then hope your pilot is decent enough to be patiently waiting for you.

If you’re coming from Joburg, it’s about an hour’s flight to Hoedspruit, followed by roughly another hour’s transfer to the lodge.  Private charters can land at Kateka’s nearby airstrip.

Setting

Kateka sits in the Klaserie Private Nature Reserve, part of the wider Greater Kruger, and measuring roughly 60,000 hectares, though the lodge itself has access to about 16,000 hectares of traversing.  In English, it means you’re not fenced into some contrived safari theme park.  Klaserie is noticeably quieter than Thornybush or the busier pockets of Sabi Sands, which has its pros and cons.  The land was historically made up of family farms, and while it’s now under conservation, it takes time for an area to build the kind of wildlife density you get elsewhere.  What you do gain is a huge reduction in the chaos.  It’s quieter.  You’re not spending your drives feeling like safari paparazzi are tailing you, because while you’ll see other vehicles, it’s far less of a circus.

The lodge overlooks a watering hole, which does at least half the aesthetic heavy lifting.  Elephants wander through with pleasing regularity, and at dusk, it can look pretty damn cinematic.  The terrain around it is fairly barren in parts, especially this time of year, but the waterhole gives the property an anchor point that draws your eye away from the less inspiring bits.  Like most of the property.  And all the fences.  But not in the discreet, gentle, you-forget-it-exists and it’s keeping-me-and-my-family-safe type of way.  Here, the fence is everywhere, very much part of the view, giving off some very penitentiary vibes.

Facilities

The entrance immediately looked promising, somewhere similar to a Cheetah Plains style.  And then, the joy instantly fades.  That’s the last time you’ll feel any feelings in your tingly bits.  The design already feels old school, which is actually impressive for a two-year-old property.  In fact, the only truly impressive thing is how unimpressive it manages to be.

The main area is small and joyless, lacking the sense of space and emotion you’d hope to find in a retreat, or even in Hannibal Lecter’s cell.  It feels more like a staff canteen than a welcome area.  And that’s largely because the staff area sits right beside it, draining whatever ambience might have survived.  Although given how flat the design feels, perhaps that’s a mercy rather than a mistake.

The flagship and epic piece should be the pool, and it is a pool.  That I will give it.  But the design somehow lobotomises the fun.  The nice thing is the 38 °C hot tub beside it (although it was never heated and I kept forgetting to check why), which again reinforces this property as a spa retreat.  I’m just not sure that it offers enough to come here, though.  Well, I am sure.  And the answer is no.

Basically, it feels cramped, the design is poor, the layout doesn’t make sense, and it feels overly busy, even though I was the only guest.  And it didn’t help that I came straight from the gorgeous, well-thought-through Masiya’s Camp.

There were some things I liked, like the wine cellar dining area, and the way they light up the watering hole at night is pretty cool.  And whilst the fence implementation sucks, the one bonus of a fenced property is that you can actually walk to and from your room without someone babysitting you.  It stops the place from feeling like a prison camp (instead it just looks like one), as so many safari camps do.  You’re marched to your room at 8 pm and can’t leave in case you feed a Gremlin after midnight.  Or something.

But where they giveth, they also taketh away, like with the veranda full of dining tables that somehow makes the place feel like it was designed by me in my 20s, when my idea of decor was a mattress that didn’t have stains on it.  The tables are packed so tightly together that there’s no chance of anyone having a discreet conversation about anything other than the weather.  Indoors is somehow worse — there’s room for one table, and the alternative is a giant communal table that I sincerely hope is decorative, because communal dining belongs in hell.  And I ain’t going there for another few years.

I have been to camps I do not like.  I have been to camps I do not appreciate the design.  But I’ve never been somewhere that felt like the designer didn’t like it either.  Some properties photograph badly but look beautiful in real life.  Others look good in photos and better at night.  Kateka does neither.  No amount of golden hour will convince you a designer gave it much thought.  No one will convince me that enough money was spent here to justify the cost.

Sitting at lunch while doors repeatedly open, staff walk back and forth, and conversation carries through the small space does not feel high-end.  It feels busy.  The pool hanging over the edge looks cool, but the main area around it is so cramped you won’t want to be there.  Seeing staff vehicles on the way out is something top lodges avoid, because the illusion is part of the magic.  Kateka’s illusion is making you want to come here in the first place.

Spa / Gym

If you are searching for a reason to come here, the wellness facilities are the best I’ve seen in a safari lodge.

The manager clearly knows exactly what she’s on about, and it’s great to have someone talking about things with authority rather than regurgitating something they learnt on the back of a packet.

They have an F45 gym, though I do think that may sound a bit more impressive than it is – it’s some cardio and strength equipment, all common in other safari gyms, but with TV screens.  Having an F45 gym says more about them being serious about having a gym than the gym being any better than, say, a Singita.  All the same, it is cool to see.  Less cool to use, as I don’t like F45, but that’s a story for another day.

Facilities include: an infra-red sauna, hydrotherapy pool, cold plunge pool and a salon including manicure and pedicure.  It’s all very impressive.  Reception also doubles as a boutique that feels like a fancy space shop.

I did an afternoon session of F45 workout, sauna, massage, and sound therapy.  A great way to spend an afternoon.  The sound therapy with crystals and negative energy, and crystals being put on me, made me convinced I was gonna wake up in the bear costume from Midsommar.

Room

There are just 6 rooms here: 3 x Roof Top Suite, 2 x Deluxe and 1 x Private Villa (3 bedroom), which is very close to one of the Deluxe Suites and can even extend the villa, if you want

I stayed in a Deluxe, which is definitely the starting room category you should decide on, as the Roof Top Suite is tiny, although, weirdly, it has a larger pool.  This is a legacy of this being a being an existing camp that they took over and kept the structure.

I’m unsure how to describe the style – definitely modern, but nothing wow or homely or really much in the way I can say about it that’s overly positive.  It already feels like a missed opportunity.  The size isn’t grand, the design isn’t grand, the materials don’t feel grand.  I think what I’m saying is it’s not very grand.  Shall we go with “Aldi chic”?

Nothing about the room inspires much confidence.  There’s not even anywhere to eat.  I had food sent to the room as it was raining and there’s just a coffee table I had to huddle over to slurp some soup.  It’s all glass to face out, so there’s a good amount of light coming in

They’ve gone to town a bit on the tech.  Electric switches for blinds and sheers – cool.  Motion sensor lights in the bathroom and toilet – I like it, but they take an age to turn off unless you do it manually.  And good luck figuring out how to do that.

I thought the most impressive part was an iPad for controlling lights and blinds.  That’s the first time I’ve seen that in a safari lodge before.  It’s common in many city hotels and beach resorts, but not safari.  Yet it’s also the first time I’ve seen it screwed onto a wall.  Yes, a wall.  Did they spend so long around animals that they mistook the guests for them, too?  If you want to turn off the lights on the iPad, then walk around to see what it did, all whilst you’re huddled in the corner looking at this screen.  It’s madness.  Cheap, cheap, madness.

What kinda lodge screws the iPad to the wall?!  The iPad screwed into the wall is the champion of cheap decisions, narrowly beating the room’s pedal bin.  Or the leather sofa that feels like it’s been around long enough to have seen things.  Things that cannot be unseen.

There’s also air conditioning, but only beside the door – it would have made more sense to have two, or one right over the bed, or behind it at least.  Were I not sweating at night I wouldn’t have found reason to complain.

The style is open planned, with living/bedroom all one area, but between bedroom to bathroom there is a dressing area with mirror that splits it up.  The toilet is positioned away from the bathroom with a door, so you don’t have to go into the bathroom, which is kinda useful as those motion sensors kick in and blind you.  Outdoors is probably the best part of the room, with the bath, plunge pool and loungers.  But that electric fence is staring right back at ya.

Service

The stay list was handled well overall, except they only had one UK adapter.  They did procure a Tempur pillow, which I appreciate.

Trevor, the GM, is wonderful — hugely experienced and genuinely warm.  His brother was my guide, and his wife works on property, giving the place a lovely family feel.  There is very much an attitude of wanting to create a wonderful stay, but I don’t think they quite execute it flawlessly.

They also never took my laundry away though, and I’ve still not figured how to get it cleaned, so I stink.

Food

As a wellness retreat, I was worried they were only going to serve carrots.  Luckily not.

Lunch offers five daily-changing dishes, and while the coconut rice with fish was genuinely very good, the burger was forgettable, redeemed only by a heroic portion of chips.  Dessert isn’t proactively offered, so I had to beg and claw my way to an ice cream.

Dinner orders are taken at lunchtime, with two starters, three mains, and one dessert.  Dinner is noticeably better, even if I had to huddle over a coffee table to eat it, and the dessert in particular was excellent.  Pre-drive breakfast is a lone muffin and a fruit bowl that looks rather ascetic.  Main breakfast has five à la carte dishes, plus a juice shot and a small chia pudding that arrives by default.  The breakfast menu doesn’t change, aside from the pastry of the day, which became a scone on day two.

Overall, the food is good, occasionally very good, but it never quite tips into greatness.  They were not helped by being sandwiched in between Masiya’s Camp and Londolozi, where both camps offered something world-class.

Activities

During an epic thunder and lightning storm, the whole world turned into a kind of 3D IMAX experience.  You might call it real life. I couldn’t say I was raised by a film reel and a pack of wolves.  And for October, as a seasoned safari goer, I knew what to expect.  Only to get the unexpected.  Not in my wildest dreams would it be this cold.  Temperatures dropped to 13°C, which might not sound that low, but it felt like being shot in the face by hail when you’re in an open game viewer, and god is taking a leak on your face.  A reminder that you should always pack a coat.  Always.

Game viewing at Kateka is a mix of Big Five game viewing and long, contemplative drive through not very much.  So yes, I saw the Big Five, including a huge male leopard, a massive buffalo herd, and elephants wandering past the lodge’s watering hole like they were on a timer.  But the concession is relatively new to wildlife and you do feel that in certain stretches where the bush still lacks the depth of a mature reserve.  It’s a huge area overall, though Kateka only traverses about a third of it, and the two-vehicles-per-sighting rule keeps things civilised.

Yet with lots of driving at times without much going on, it’s yet another point that makes it hard to recommend here.

Kids Friendly

Fully fenced, so safe from that perspective.

The Good

• Service

The Bad

• Accommodation
• Lacking a luxury feel
• Quiet concession

The Luxurious

• Wellness experience

Conclusion

So, does a safari wellness concept work?  I suspect if you’re reading this in order (well done you) then you already know the answer.  I can see the appeal, because safari downtime is usually filled with endless food and the sudden realisation that you’re shopping for weight-loss drugs as a hobby.  Having a proper wellness focus is genuinely a great idea.

So let me rephrase it: does Kateka work?  No.  I wish someone with deeper pockets had executed it, because the concept is strong, the delivery far less so.  It’s simply not an impressive place to look at, and it never feels like one either.

It’s not all negative.

The managers are deeply passionate about the place, and so is the team.  There’s a strong desire to personalise the experience for each guest.  The concession is relatively quiet, especially compared to Thornybush, which does work in its favour if you’re not in a rush.  The wellness concept itself is strong, and I appreciated that they seem to know the lodge’s pros and cons, even if I was less complimentary than they are.

But the reality is that the hard product feels cheap and is a major downgrade from what I’m used to.  Price explains some of it, but not all.

The issue is that the competition already does everything better: food, service, accommodation, facilities.  And the wellness angle — while excellent — is not unique enough to carry the lodge.  Except for the hydrotherapy pool and the gym TVs for F45, Londolozi and Lion Sands match them facility for facility, and those properties also offer exceptional hard product.  And better wildlife.  So the wellness-safari concept ends up feeling like inventing pornography and proudly announcing there’s no nudity.

The overall impression is of a worthy idea executed on a restricted budget, one that other lodges already deliver without needing to make it their USP.  Because the competition doesn’t need a USP in wellness.  They have everything else going for them too.

As it stands, it is a missed opportunity.