The Eastern Cape has seen centuries of loss, but standing at Founders Lodge, surrounded by wildlife and stories of recovery, it became clear that decline is not the only possible ending.
Eastern Cape, South Africa (22 February 2026)Ā ā Founders Lodge: Where hope grows. Thatās the title I chose while I was driving in a game vehicle, surrounded by wildlife. But also hope. Hope was all around me.
I was invited toĀ Founders Lodge by MantisĀ (or Founders as I now call it), a luxury boutique safari lodge set on its own private land in the Eastern Cape, with traversing rights on Shamwari Game Reserve, and yes, it had all the bells and whistles, thoughtful spaces, generous comfort, food served in the most breathtaking locations and sunsets that made my shoulders drop, my breath slow down and my jaw unclench. The lodge even has a luxury train carriage where you can sleepā¦ but Founders is so much more than just indulgence alone.
Founders is a living story of restoration, adaptability and very real good news that deserves to be shared.
Founders Lodge was once the home of conservationist Adrian Gardiner, and over breakfast one morning, I had the chance to sit with him and listen. This man makes you lean in. His stories shift perspective. He makes you believe that we can take something broken and not only fix it, but build it into something that thrives. Adrian was a successful businessman (and still is) in Port Elizabeth who, in 1990, bought a 1,200-hectare farm as a family weekend escape. Curiosity changed everything. As he researched the landās history, he discovered that the Eastern Cape had once been one of the richest wildlife regions in Africa in terms of biodiversity. The Big Five were first encountered here. What followed centuries of farming, hunting and drought was a landscape stripped of vegetation and wildlife. That realisation sparked something. No, it lit a fire inside of him, and what began as a personal project became a mission to restore what had been lost and prove that conservation could work for nature and people alike.
āI found my passionā, he tells me.
After years of running various businesses, Adrian decided to put all his effort into an uncharted world for him. Bringing back wildlife to an area where there was none.
āIt wasnāt easy. And the outcome was never guaranteed. But I knew that this was something I wanted to try to do,ā Adrian explained.
What Adrian and his team took on here was enormous. You donāt undo almost 300 years of damage with good intentions and a few years of effort. And many people believed it could not be done at all. But Adrian had that fire in him. He knew this project would need people willing to think in decades, not seasons, and every single person had to invest in something they might never fully see completed. The work began at ground level, literally rebuilding life from the soil up, before animals could ever return. Negotiations began, fences were removed, the land was restored, and, slowly, it began to respond.
Being in the reserve, youāre constantly aware of what was lost, what was found and what has been clawed back.
We have a rule at Good Things Guy to not write about rhinos while giving away their locations but I simply cannot leave them out of this story. There were so many of them. I have been lucky enough to travel to many lodges around our beautiful country and I have never seen that many rhinos in one location. In South Africa, where poaching has devastated populations over the past two decades and where we have mourned animal after animal lost to greed, this felt almost unreal. Yet here, and across many parts of the Eastern Cape, the story has shifted. The guides tell me they handle poaching differently.
This is the place where hope grows.
