Cybele Forest Lodge and Spa, Cybele Game Reserve, South Africa

Cybele was established over 25 years ago and is now one of the country's best-loved upmarket hotels. Nestling in woods near Hazyview, it’s a country house style lodge offering a posh but not pretentious base roughly halfway between the Kruger and Johannesburg/Pretoria.

We arrived in a torrential downpour having just been washed out of our tents in the Kruger and sank into Cybele’s pampering atmosphere with a sigh of relief. Good service is easy to find in SA, but the service here is a cut above average, with the friendly and confident staff really seeming to enjoy their jobs without being over-deferential.

Rooms come in various shapes and sizes, all individually decorated. Some are new-built (with impeccable taste) and seriously luxurious (think minibar in the bathroom, outdoor shower and private plunge pool) while some settle for merely comfy and cosy, with roaring log fires, soft sofas and covered private patios.

Sybarites will coo over Cybele’s dreamy ‘spa in the forest’ offering all the usual facials, massages and beauty therapies alongside an outdoor pool and a state of the art gymnasium. If the weather is fine, the lodge’s stunning gardens, floodlit at night, beckon for a stroll after dinner. Speaking of dinner, the food is also hard to fault, with down-to-earth and hearty lunches (curry, pasta or big salads) and more fomal dinner served in the atmospheric candlelit dining room.