Before our honeymoon, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what luxury looked like. Beautiful suites, exceptional food and thoughtful service all mattered to me then, and they still do now. But our stay at Victoria Falls River Lodge reminded me that sometimes the greatest luxury is simply being somewhere remarkable, with enough time and space to really appreciate it.
When Barry and I were planning our honeymoon, I already knew the lodge well by reputation. I’d recommended it to clients before and had friends return with glowing stories, but the Malachite Suites were what really drew me to it for our own trip. Adults only, beautifully designed and sitting right on the banks of the Zambezi, they felt intimate in a way that many larger safari lodges don't.
I also loved that it wasn't part of a huge international hotel group. The lodge is part of an independent collection with conservation at its heart, and that combination of a very personal experience with a genuine connection to the wilderness around it felt far more appealing to me than simply choosing the biggest or most famous name.
Our honeymoon began with a boat transfer across the Zambezi and, by the time we stepped ashore and started walking towards our suite, it already felt as though we'd left the rest of the world behind. Almost immediately we could hear a group of hippos nearby, which was quite a surreal welcome and very quickly established that we were the visitors here, not the other way around.
That feeling stayed with me throughout our time there. Mornings started with coffee on our deck watching the river drift past, while evenings often ended back on the Zambezi with a sundowner in hand as the sky turned gold and burnt orange. We'd wait for the first baby hippos to emerge from the water as darkness settled over the river, and those quiet moments became every bit as memorable to me as the game drives and excursions we'd travelled all that way to experience.
And then, of course, there was Victoria Falls itself.
We could see the enormous plume of spray rising above the trees long before we reached it, and suddenly its local name, Mosi-oa-Tunya, The Smoke That Thunders, made complete sense. Within seconds of reaching the viewpoints we were absolutely soaked. It genuinely felt as though we'd stepped fully clothed into a shower, and nothing I'd seen in photographs had prepared me for the noise, power or sheer scale of standing beside it.
Strangely though, when I think about that day now, I remember coming back to the lodge almost as clearly as I remember the Falls. We'd spent hours experiencing one of the world's greatest natural wonders and then returned to this wonderfully peaceful spot beside the river, where everything immediately slowed down again. I think that contrast is a huge part of what makes the lodge work so well.
But as is so often the case with my favourite hotels, it was the people who turned a brilliant stay into one I still talk about.
We had the same guide, wonderfully named Polite, for our game drives and river safaris, which meant that by the end of our stay he felt less like somebody taking us on excursions and more like somebody we'd shared the whole experience with. The team remembered exactly how we took our coffee and knew our favourite sundowner before we needed to ask. There was always laughter, another story to hear and a genuinely warm welcome when we came back from whatever we'd been doing that day.
That's the sort of hospitality I find almost impossible to quantify when I'm recommending a hotel. It isn't about somebody remembering your drink because a preference has been entered into a system. It's the feeling that the people looking after you genuinely care whether you're having a wonderful time.
And for me, that's a much more meaningful version of luxury.
Why it’s in our Wild Collection
Victoria Falls River Lodge captures exactly what I want our Wild Collection to be about. Being somewhere remote or surrounded by wildlife isn't enough on its own; I want the hotel to help you feel more connected to what's around you, while still giving you the warmth, comfort and brilliant hospitality that allow you to relax into the experience.
If I returned tomorrow, I'd stay exactly where we honeymooned. I'd choose the Malachite Suites again, wake up beside the Zambezi, spend another day exploring with Polite and be back on the river in time for a sundowner, hoping to see those baby hippos appear again.
When I think about our honeymoon now, there are obviously some spectacular memories. But some of my favourites are also the simplest: coffee on the deck, conversations with the team and sitting quietly on the river as the light disappeared.
Victoria Falls might have been the reason we travelled there, but Victoria Falls River Lodge is one of the reasons I want to go back.
