The quick take
Maloba is small on purpose. Five suites, a maximum of ten guests in the lodge, and a separate four-bedroom villa — no more than 18 people on a reserve of over 20,000 hectares. There is no set timetable. You decide when you drive, when you eat and how you spend the day, and a ranger and a kitchen shape themselves around that.
It sits near Kimberley in the Northern Cape, on the edge of the Upper Kalahari, and it is malaria-free. The land was not always wild — it was farmland, bought up farm by farm by the Perridon family and rewilded over years of soil work and reintroduction. That history is the whole point of the place, and it shows in the detail: the working gardens that feed the table, the horses and the farm animals, the rangers who know every corner of the ground.
Maloba is a member of The Leading Hotels of the World. In practice that means the service is close, personal and quiet rather than showy — the kind of stay where staff learn your name and your routine by the first evening.
The suites
There are five rooms in the main lodge: four Maloba Suites and the Diamond Suite. Each one is set apart for privacy, with its own plunge pool and uninterrupted views across the reserve. The design is calm and open — glass that slides back to the deck, natural materials, nothing fussy. You wake with the reserve in front of you and you can be in your own pool within a few steps of the bed.
The Diamond Suite
The Diamond Suite is the most secluded of the five, positioned on its own for guests who want the quietest corner of the lodge. It carries the same private pool and outlook as the Maloba Suites, with a little more distance from everything else. It is the room couples ask for.
The Farm & Gardens Villa
Alongside the lodge is the Farm & Gardens Villa — a separate house taken on exclusive use. It has four en-suite bedrooms and sleeps up to eight, with its own private chef and its own team. This is the booking for a family or a group of friends who want the reserve to feel like theirs: meals cooked to your preferences, the daily rhythm set by your group, children able to spread out. It can stand on its own or be booked together with the lodge suites when a larger party travels as one.
The farm and the food
Dining at Maloba starts in the gardens, not the kitchen. What was dry, iron-rich Northern Cape soil has been built up into more than three hectares of productive ground, growing seasonal fruit, vegetables and herbs through the year. Chickens, pigs and horses are part of the same working system. The result is a kitchen that cooks to what the land gives that week rather than to a printed menu, and a Farm & Gardens tour — with a farm-to-table lunch — that comes with every stay.
The cooking itself is precise and refined, built on those local, seasonal ingredients and changing as the seasons turn. Meals move around the property too: a long lunch by the gardens, dinner on your deck, or a bush dinner laid out under the Kalahari stars with lanterns down the table.
Game drives and the wildlife
With at most ten guests in the lodge, drives are private and unhurried. You head out with your own ranger when it suits you — first light, late afternoon into the dark on a night drive, or a guided walk when you would rather be on foot. Because so few people share the ground, you rarely cross paths with another vehicle.
Maloba is Kalahari-edge country, so the game list mixes big plains species with dry-country specials. White rhino, Cape buffalo, giraffe, eland, gemsbok, greater kudu, red hartebeest, sable and roan antelope, blue wildebeest, springbok, mountain zebra and hippo all range the reserve. The smaller and shyer animals are part of what makes this corner of the country different — cheetah, caracal, the rare black-footed cat, bat-eared fox, aardvark, aardwolf, meerkat, ground squirrel, springhare and porcupine. Birders do well, with martial eagle, Cape vulture, pale chanting goshawk, spotted eagle-owl and ostrich among the regular sightings.
Beyond the game drive
Safari is the centre of a stay, but it is not the whole of it. Horseback safaris take you across the plains at the animals' own level. A private helicopter safari lifts you over country you cannot reach by road — and the same helicopter can bring you in from Kimberley. Guests can shoot clays or rifles alongside the rangers, join conservation work on the reserve, or take a run into Kimberley itself, where the diamond history of the Northern Cape is on the doorstep.
For those who want it, Maloba runs signature conservation experiences by arrangement — including taking part in rhino and Cape buffalo darting operations with the team, a rare, hands-on look at how a reserve manages its most valuable animals.
Rest and wellness
The pace is deliberately slow, and the reserve leans into that. Beyond your own plunge pool, you can book an in-suite massage, a personal training session or yoga set out over the landscape. With no fixed schedule, a day of doing very little between two good drives is entirely normal here.
Conservation and community
Rewilding is the founding idea at Maloba, and conservation runs through the operation rather than sitting to one side of it. The reserve frames its work around six themes — restoration, innovation, protection, people, leadership and education — carried out through the Maloba Foundation. The land itself is the headline project: former farms stitched back together, soil rebuilt, indigenous plants returned and wildlife reintroduced. The local community has been part of the story from the start, through employment and training across hospitality, guiding, farming and conservation, and through surplus farm produce shared with the people who live and work around the reserve. Guests who want to can support the foundation directly during their stay.
Getting there
Maloba is reached through Kimberley, the capital of the Northern Cape. Kimberley has daily scheduled flights from both Johannesburg and Cape Town, which makes the reserve easy to slot into a wider trip. From the airport it is a short road transfer to the lodge, or a helicopter transfer straight in for guests who would rather arrive by air. We arrange the flights and the transfer as part of the booking.
Combining Maloba with the rest of Southern Africa
Because Kimberley connects by air to Johannesburg and Cape Town, Maloba pairs naturally with the big names of a Southern African trip. The reserve's own journeys set the pattern, and we tailor the same routes to your dates and taste:
- Cape Town & private safari — around eight nights, opening in the city before the quiet of the Upper Kalahari.
- Cape, the Winelands and the Upper Kalahari — roughly eleven nights, adding the vineyards of the Cape Winelands between city and bush.
- South Africa & Victoria Falls — about eleven nights, ending at the Zambezi and the Falls.
- South Africa, Zimbabwe & Botswana — around ten nights across three distinct safari countries.
- Luxury South Africa & Mozambique — a longer journey of roughly fifteen nights, finishing on the Mozambican coast.
These are starting points, not fixed packages. We adjust the lodges, the order and the length to suit how you like to travel.
How to book Maloba through Beyond Africa Safaris
Tell us your dates, your group and whether you want a suite, the Diamond Suite or the exclusive-use Farm & Gardens Villa, and we handle the rest — the booking, the flights into Kimberley, the transfer in, and any signature experiences you would like added. If you want Maloba as part of a longer trip through Cape Town, the Winelands or further afield, we build the whole itinerary end to end. Send us a note and we will come back with a plan and a price for your dates.
