Today, we moved from Mashatu Game Reserve in Botswana to Mala Mala Game Reserve in South Africa. Our new guide, Jacques, picked us up at the airport and brought us to Mala Mala Rattray’s lodge for our stay. After checking in, he took us on our first game drive at Mala Mala.

But first, let’s show you the beautiful Rattray’s Lodge at Mala Mala. It is quite different from Mashatu’s Euphorbia Lodge. Rattray’s reminds me of the old South in the USA (and probably the not-so-old South in the USA 😉). It looks like a throwback to colonial times.

Here is the entry we pulled up to in the truck. You can see right through the building out to the back deck.

The grounds here are beautiful. Here is our path to our room. Although “room” is a bit of an understatement, as you’ll see.

We turned left at that path you can see above, and here is our villa.

As you are about to see, this is really a house, not a “room”. It’s unbelievable.
This is the entryway. You can see into the bedroom/living area on the right side of the photo.

The main room was huge! There is the bed and also a very large living area. We didn’t even get a full photo of this room There is more living area you can’t see.

The bathrooms were insane – and, yes, I did use the plural “bathroomS”. They have his and hers bathrooms! What!?! Each bathroom is on one side of the villa.

This is the “mens” bathroom. You can enter from two sides, this door brings you first into the dressing area. You can already see how large this entire “bathroom” is as it continues through those two doorways.

From the dressing area, you enter the bathroom. The toilet is just out of the picture on the right side.

Through this doorway, you enter the shower area. It’s huge! And, yes, that is a towel warming rack.

Now, let’s go to the other side of the house to the “women’s bathroom”. For some reason, someone thought it would be a good idea to give women a bathtub instead of a shower. Who are those people? LOL! So instead of that fabulous shower, we have this old fashioned bathtub and dresser. Well, I didn’t use the tub, we both used the shower.

The bathroom was similar, except it had a bidet added to the toilet. We didn’t take a picture of that. It just seemed strange to take photos of toilets. 😉 There was also an identical dressing area.

Rattray’s overlooks the Sand River, which is very nice for viewing wildlife. The back of the villa has a large patio area to hang out, although we never did. We were always too busy with the drives and catching up between them.

On the side, there is a plunge pool, very nice!

That’s our tour of our villa at Mala Mala Rattray’s. Quite the difference from Euphorbia. They are both great in their own ways.

Next, we’re heading out on our first Mala Mala safari drive!