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Tags: Luxury Tents / Luxury Camping / Luxury Safari / Namibia Hotels / → All Tags

'Chalets on Stilts': Wolwedans' Luxury Tents

Where: P.O. Box 5048 , Windhoek, Namibia

If you're headed for Namibia's NamibRand Desert, make sure you have a reservation at the luxury camps of Wolwedans.

There's a reason celebrities like Charlize Theron and the couple known as "Brangelina" have come here (with Maddox and Zahara in tow). Surrounded by striking red sand dunes and mountain ranges, the vast complex features all manner of accomodations, from private chalets to a lodge big enough for a party of 12 -- it's desert camping in high style.

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Tags: Australia Hotels / Luxury Safari / Uluru Hotels / → All Tags

When Camping Turns Luxury Down Under

Where: YULARA DRIVE AYERS ROCK RESORT, YULARA, NO, Australia, 0872

We've already whet your appetite for an Australian luxury tent holiday with our daydreaming about a stay at Longitude 131: a relaxing stay with the best views in Australia. Luxury tents seem like the best of both worlds to us, since you can do the whole communing with nature thing but without having to, well, commune with nature too much. It's the fresh air and great views without the ants in your sleeping bag (or worse).

It seems like these luxury tents are starting to sprout all over Australia, as there are a number of advantages, not least that they don't require such environmental destruction as setting up a regular hotel does. Plus:

New safari-style camps come with few worries ... Instead they deliver king and queen-size beds, ensuite bathrooms, mini-bars, airconditioning and sometimes canapes at sunset. Australia has a handful of upmarket tented resorts, often in wild and beautiful places where bricks and mortar would come between the visitor and what they've come to see.

Other Aussie "tent" hotels that come recommended include the Gawler Range Kangaluna Camp properties in the outback north of Adelaide, the tented Wilson Island on a bird sanctuary at the Great Barrier Reef and the creekside Paperbark Camp in New South Wales. Check them out if you want to sound tough enough to "go camping" (but don't show your friends back home the photos if you want them to believe the camping thing).

[Photo: Chela & Damian]

Related Stories:
· Aussie Tents a Luxury [The Australian]
· Cubicle Dreamin': Longitude 131 at Ayers Rock [HotelChatter]

Hotel Reviews:
· Longitude 131

Tags: Cubicle Dreamin' / Africa Hotels / Luxury Safari / Luxury Lodges / → All Tags

Cubicle Dreamin': Let's Go On Safari

Where: Arusha, Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania

Cubicle Dreamin' is a feature in which we ask the hotel mavens to take some time out of their busy work day, surf the Internet, and tell us what hotel they wish they could beam themselves to right that very second--all on the slave driving companies dime, of course. Oh, like these people aren't surfing aimlessly anyway--at least now their purposeless clicking will be cobbled together into useful hotel stories--we hope. Have a destination hotel you are just dying to leave your cube for? Send the story our way.

When you realise you've got nearly halfway through February and you still haven't started what you really want to do this year, it's time to shake things up a bit. And what better way than getting a bit wild in Africa: in a luxury safari lodge, of course (there's wild and then there's just uncomfortable). My pick today is Tanzania's Ngorongoro Serena Safari Lodge, a luxury resort built on the edge of a crater. The website is a touch on the over-poetic side, describing the resort as:

Sensitively constructed so as to take nothing from its environment whilst affording endless vistas over the heat-shimmering reaches of the crater below, the clustered boulder-built buildings of the Lodge hug the crater rim, linked by rope-lashed timber walkways that skirt the buttressed roots of ancient, liana-hung trees.

It goes on to talk about the "concentrated hush of a game-viewing hide" and finally describes the Lodge as "a unique blend of world-class luxury, timeless volcanic splendour and ethnic style". While nearly nothing on earth could be quite as magical as they describe (and nearly nobody on earth knows so many positive-sounding adjectives), guest reviews almost unanimously agree that the Ngorongoro is a marvellous place to stay. While you're there, you can do wildlife walks, crater hikes, visit Maasai villages and even have a massage. Rooms come complete with your own cave-style wall paintings of giraffes and gazelle.

[Photo: jamesrider]