The safari camps in Sabi Sands are some of the most beautiful in the world.  From the Out of Africa elegance of Sabi Sabi Bush Lodge and Dulani Lodge to the modern extravagance of Sabi Sabi Earth Lodge, everything is executed perfectly.

One of the common areas of Sabi Sabi Earth Lodge

Sabi Sabi Earth Lodge

Dulani Lodge

Each camp is in the bush, without fences or walls, so you have to call for a ranger to walk you to and from at night.  Elephants, antelope and even leopard have all walked through the camps recently.  Each villa is private and separate, and there are only a handful of villas in each camp.

If there was one uncomfortable moment in our trip, it was encapsulated in the melancholy that we felt, as friends instead of lovers, staying in some of the most romantic rooms in the world, with the laughs of hyena echoing across the night.  At another time, had we been slightly different people, this would have been one of those romantic scenes written in love stories.  But we had already crossed that line and couldn’t go back.

Mornings start early at each camp, with a 6am knock.  It is winter in South Africa, and the air is chill in the Land Rover as the sun breaks over the savannah.  The first minutes are quiet, as we wake to the world.  But soon, the ground and sky warm and the melancholy breaks into the day.

There are compartments carved into my heart by each of the people that I have loved.  Though I close them off and don’t live in those compartments any more, I can still see through the window of memory into those places I lived with that person.  And they are beautiful and remembered and I look into them often.  No one will occupy those same rooms.

But, like an Escher drawing, the rules of space and time don’t apply in my heart.  Though I close off a compartment when the relationship ends, when we’ve said our last goodbyes to that part of our shared life, when I’ve shut the door quietly and the room is silent and will forever be unoccupied, it doesn’t mean that there is less space remaining for the next occupant.  Because I have learned better how to love each time, and because the relationship made my heart bigger, the square footage left in the rest of my heart grows even as a section is carved away and closed off.

Goodbye, Michael.  You will always be in my heart.

Hello, whatever is next.