The Cradle Boutique Hotel
The Cradle Boutique Hotel is in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, on a 7,000 hectare private game reserve, with magnificent panoramic views of the Highveld and surrounding valleys, where you can enjoy a ”fossil tour” to two major exploration sites.
It offers luxury ‘hip-eco’ timber and thatch chalets with en-suite bathrooms, air-con, and secluded viewing decks with unparalleled views of the African landscape.
The restaurant is a modern architectural masterpiece in stone, steel and glass, designed with retractable floor-to-ceiling glass doors that literally let the outside in. The long, wide verandah endows diners with a 180° view of the game-filled valley below, and uninterrupted views of the landscape beyond and above the vast blue, African sky. The food theme is Bush-Bistro, accompanied by a handpicked selection of the best South African wine estates.
The Malapa ‘fossil tour’ is an exclusive, privately guided trip in open game drive vehicles that affords you the unique opportunity of experiencing, firsthand, two active fossil digs in the heart of the Cradle of Humankind. From death traps and bone collectors to streams that disappear into vast underground lakes, and rock-eating termites with magnesium mandibles.
Two world famous sites — Gladysvale and Malapa — are the key attractions visited. The protected area is home to leopard, brown hyaena giraffes, and antelope, like the magnificent eland, blesbok, kudu, blue wildebeest and red hartebees.
It’s an ancient landscape, where geology is slowly revealing the previously hidden origins of the human race.