“We’re doing it for our grandchildren” means a lot more when “it” means developing a game reserve.

Muffin - “I’m from Bath” - was long-limbed, long-haired and long on curiosity. She was nine years old and she’d come here with her grown-up sister for a holiday and she was bouncing a ball against the steps. Sometimes she stopped to look at the animals on the grassy plain just behind her: a pair of rhino with their baby, herds of buffalo with their babies, wildebeest, giraffe, impala, zebra, eland, bontebok and even a stately kudu bull.

“Tony,” she said, her twentieth question in twenty minutes, “how come your Lodge hasn’t got six stars?”

Thub. Thub. Thub. The bouncing was as rhythmic and playful as the sweet chuckle of the bull-bull that sang from the bushes over by the water tank.

Mid-morning at Buffalo Hills Lodges and Safaris and Tony Kinahan was trying to conduct a meeting on the stoep: Business Associates here to discuss packages for the coming tourist season. But he was finding it difficult to concentrate on the commerce - his heart was with the child.

And the Associates were succumbing, too, finding the peaceful, restful atmosphere of the Reserve impossible to resist. The conversation dawdled almost to a stop as the adults stared out across the plain. Someone said he could see something moving on a hill in the distance. “That was where we saw the Knysna elephants,” said Tony, “coupla months ago. Used to come here all the time when this was still a citrus farm.”

Thub. Thub. Thub.

“Why, Tony?” persisted Muffin.

“Because lodges don’t get six stars,” he said.

“Well, why don’t you have five then?”

“Because only hoighty-toity people go to five star places,” joked one of the Associates.

But Tony just laughed - and explained the country’s Star Grading System to the child, clearly and without talking down to her. He’s that serious about children - so serious, in fact, that they’re the motivation behind the game reserve which he,  his wife, Maria, and their business partners, Jack and Lucy Mudd, launched some seven years ago.

“I saw all the wild places disappearing so fast,” he said. “Even when my children were growing up they couldn’t see it as wild as it was when I was young and I worried that my grandchildren wouldn’t see anything at all.

“When I met Jack and Lucy, I found that we shared exactly the same concerns so I suppose it was inevitable that we’d do something about it.”

g16.jpgJack and Lucy had bought Buffalo Hills and had already begun clearing the citrus from the lands and the black wattle from the riverbeds and introducing wild animals when Tony and Maria joined them to take charge of developing the Lodge.

“Unfortunately conservation has to support itself,” said Tony, “and with land prices having become ridiculous because of the greed of the big investors, it’s becoming more and more difficult to find a working model to sustain it - so of course we turned to tourism.”

Tony and Maria now offer accommodation for 30 guests in three double rooms, two garden cottages and eleven en-suite luxury safari tents - and rates include not only dinner, bed and breakfast, but also guided safari game drives, guided walks and tours of the Nyati jjj Distillery.

DISTILLERY?
Well, yes. In the early days, every self-respecting South African farmer stooked his own mampoer, and Tony is a farmer by trade. “Jack started the distillery when he had a game farm in Mpumalanga,” said Tony, “and we took it over when we bought into Buffalo Hills.”

Mampoer is a traditional drink and the presence of the distillery makes the Reserve unique - an important asset when you’re fighting for attention amongst all the big-money safari camps that have opened with the country’s rise in popularity.

But what makes Buffalo Hills even more unique is that it isn’t a big money reserve. “We’ve deliberately kept our prices low,” said Tony, “because we want as many South Africans as possible to experience the Garden Route in the wild.” It’s part of the vision: making Buffalo Hills accessible to the parents ensures that it’s accessible to the children (see box).

But a game reserve is more than just a collection of animals - and Jack, Lucy, Tony and Maria are committed to a philosophy of the Reserve as part of the local community.

“There are many issues and challenges facing the people of Wittedrif,” said Tony. “And you can’t sit around waiting for the Government to do anything about it.”

Besides the obvious - chamber maids, cooks, tour guides, maintenance crews and distillery workers - Buffalo Hills is continuously looking for interesting and creative ways of developing training and job opportunities.

“We have a helluva problem with black wattle and rooikrans,” said Jack. But, he adds, although they’re two of the Southern Cape’s most invasive aliens and they do have to be removed - they’ve all but choked many of the rivers in the area - they still have some value. So he’s started a firewood business and, for the black wattle, he’s bought a chipper.

“The chips are set aside for compost and SANParks and the Working for Water people are very excited about the product - and, of course, we’re excited that we can use the ‘rubbish’ from our conservation work to create jobs.”

If you’d seen the farm before it was turned into a Reserve, you probably wouldn’t have seen those river beds. And if you’d been there just a few years ago, when the first of the aliens had been cleared, you’d have seen large open areas which would have looked out of place. But the indigenous plants began to germinate almost as soon as the wattles had gone - and now when you drive along next to the rivers at Buffalo Hills you’ll see a riot of young trees, keurbooms and the like, and grazing quietly amongst them the grace and beauty of more than twenty species of re-introduced game. And the other wild animals are there, too - the smaller antelopes, leopard, porcupines and bushpig and more than 150 species of birds.

And that’s how - slowly, and with great thought and care - the African wilderness is being saved at Buffalo Hills in the Bitou Valley near Plettenberg Bay.

Just a little something for people like Muffin and her generation - and their children and theirs. And for Jack’s and Tony’s grandchildren, too.

Conservation Raises Funds For Schools
Tony Kinahan has found a unique way of raising funds for schools. “We invite governing bodies to make up parties of friends and bring their children to stay during the green winter months,” he says. “Then we donate a substantial percentage of the turnover to the school or we use the money to buy whatever equipment they need.”

The Reserve has also pledged a percentage of turnover from winter conferences generated through the schools and their parent bodies. “The results have been outstanding: one school got such a big group together they had to come in stages. Booked us out for four weekends.”

It’s a win-win situation: the schools get to raise funds, families get to holiday together and Buffalo Hills gets to use up some of its spare capacity in an otherwise quiet time of the year.

But most of all the children get to see a wild corner of Africa.

www.buffalohills.co.za