The Best Bloody Mary You'll Ever Have Is in the Sabi Sand

There's a particular feeling about waking up at Chitwa Chitwa. The air is still cool, the bush is busy with those small noises you only hear before sunrise, and you're already half a step ahead of yourself, layering up, pulling on a beanie, walking to the cruiser with a coffee in your hand. By the time the wheels are turning, you're somewhere between sleepy and electrified. The Sabi Sand and the anticipation of an open vehicle sighting has a way of doing that.

Then the sun starts to climb, the cold lifts off your shoulders, and around 8:30 the light goes from gold to white as the heat begins to bake the gravel road. Then you round a corner, and there it is. Jaffles. Boma. Glasses. Ice. The team. Smiles all round.

The Bloody Mary has been around for almost a hundred years. Paris in the twenties, New York not long after, then everywhere. It's been served in hotel bars, on aeroplanes, at brunches in every city you can name. Those who love the acquired taste have strong opinions about it, and most of those opinions involve their own variation being the best one going.

We'll save you the search. The best Bloody Mary you'll ever have is in the heart of the Sabi Sand.

The reason it's so good has a lot to do with the prep. While most of the lodge is still asleep, the team is already on it.

Bacon goes onto the heat first, fried slowly until every rasher is cracker-crisp. Celery is trimmed and kept on ice so the stalks still snap when you lift one. Lemons are halved and quartered. Gherkins are arranged. Glasses are polished. The cool box is packed fresh, ice on top of tomato juice, with Tabasco, Worcester sauce, vodka, sea salt and black pepper lined up alongside it. The table itself, the linen, the boards, all of it is loaded onto the vehicle before the first guest has even pulled on a beanie.

By the time you're rounding the corner three hours later and the table is appearing out of nowhere, the team has been awake for longer than you have. It looks effortless when it's served to you in the bush. That's the giveaway. Things only look that easy when someone has done the work hours before you saw them.

The build is a small piece of theatre

A glass, packed with ice. A generous pour of tomato juice. A squeeze of fresh lemon, a dash of Worcester, a few drops of Tabasco (or more, if you're brave), a twist of black pepper, a pinch of salt. Vodka if you want it, none if you don't. Stir. Then the garnish, which is where the Chitwa Chitwa Bloody Mary stops being an ordinary drink and becomes a tasty work of art. A stalk of celery nestled between fresh garnish, a rasher of crispy bacon, a gherkin and a wedge of lemon on the skewer.

All of this happens about a metre in front of you while a herd of impala drift nearby and a few zebra graze in the open. A francolin calls somewhere behind the table. The vehicle's engine clicks as it cools. Guests laugh at something one of the guides just said.

Some guests walk straight past the jaffles and directly to the bar first. We understand why.

The sight of it stops you. It's vivid red and green, loaded with garnish, and looks like it should be on a mixology magazine cover. Then you lift it, and the smell arrives before the rim does. Worcester's peppery sweetness, celery, a bit of Tabasco heat, the smoke off the bacon, all of it sitting on top of cold tomato juice. It's a generous, layered smell. The kind that makes you pause for a second before you actually drink.

Then the first sip, which is up to you to dial in. Virgin gives you the clean, savoury, almost soup-like depth of the tomato and the bacon. The full version brings the warmth of the vodka and the sting of the Tabasco through it. Lighter on the heat, heavier on the lemon, whatever you like. It's an ordinary drink made extraordinary by the team, and then amplified the moment you lift your eyes from the glass and remember where you're standing.

The best part is everything that happens around the best Bloody Mary you'll ever taste. The team that was up before the sun. The details in the prep. The excitement of a stop in the middle of nowhere. The conversations between strangers who'll be friends by the end of the trip. The drink itself, in its own way, gets at what we're trying to do here. Inviting. A bit of care in every layer. A reason to enjoy something strong.

In the meantime, we'd love to welcome you. Come and stand around the table with us.