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"View Slideshow\n\nTara Getty, grandson of J.P., appears to have inherited little of his family's eccentric legacy. The 39-year-old may be as press-shy as some of his forebears, but he's managed to carve out a life for himself that is, relatively speaking, downright normal. He and his wife, Jessica, have long made their home in Cape Town, South Africa, where Tara and his brother Mark are majority shareholders in Conservation Corporation Africa, that continent's leading exponent of ecotourism. CC Africa, as it's known, operates more than 40 safari lodges and camps in six African nations, plowing the proceeds back into the various communities it inhabits.\n\nThe Phinda Private Game Reserve, in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, represents the company's flagship conservation effort, involving the restoration of some 54,400 acres of degraded farmland and the relocation of historic numbers of game. For several years Tara and Jessica Getty enjoyed the use of four thatch-roofed bush cottages in a lush valley on the west side of Phinda. The birth of their second child a few years ago prompted the couple to look for another location on the reserve where, according to Jessica Getty, \"we could just go a little bit bigger and better.\" They settled on a gentle slope overlooking an extinct volcano\u2014a spectacular site that takes in grassy plains, the surrounding hills and, on the horizon, the dunes of the Indian Ocean.\n\nThey settled on a gentle slope overlooking a volcano\u2014a spectacular site that takes in grassy plains, the surrounding hills and the dunes of the Indian Ocean.\n\nNick Plewman, an architect who has designed scores of game lodges and safari camps for CC Africa, was an obvious choice to build it. \"Tara wanted the house to be fairly low-key, to correspond to a typical South African bushveld vernacular,\" recalls Plewman. \"At the same time, he had a fairly extensive accommodation schedule and specific requirements in terms of views.\" Plewman conceived a low, linear structure that hugs the slope while managing to contain wide-open living spaces, a generous master suite and several guest suites. While the house has a traditional timber-and-thatch roof and concrete floors, its walls are made of heavy sandstone blocks that Tara Getty rescued from an old farmhouse. It's also more exposed than a conventional bush dwelling, with large glass panels that slide open to exploit the views.\n\n\"Having used these wonderful raw materials,\" says Jessica Getty, \"we were quite keen to have it clean and fresh inside.\" And so the couple recruited Chris Browne, a Johannesburg-based interior designer who has as long a history with CC Africa as Nick Plewman. \"The Gettys wanted African accents but not anything too obviously ethnic,\" reveals Browne. \"Comfort and ease of use were first and foremost. Everything was designed to just kind of flop around on.\"\n\nAt his clients' urging, Browne eschewed the \"wow factor\" he normally brings to lodge interiors in favor of relaxed but refined rooms fashioned largely around personal effects\u2014heirloom furniture, family photographs, African art and artifacts.\n\nThe entrance to the house, with its low, thatched eaves, is homey and unassuming. Inside, however, past an entrance hall furnished with little more than a few Turkana milk pots, a Senufo bed and a bold African wall hanging, a short flight of stairs descends to the living room\u2014a surprisingly lofty volume with a double-story thatched ceiling and walls of glass. Ceiling fans and quirky chandeliers made of spaghetti-like leather straps help ground the room, which is cozily furnished with hemp-covered sectionals, African pieces like leather and cowrie-shell lamps and wood Giriama posts and the Gettys' collections of black-and-white photographs and coffee-table books. \"Chris would normally have done some fantastic display on the table,\" notes Jessica Getty. \"But we didn't want it to be busy or claustrophobic. There's too much going on outside.\"\n\nThe house is all about invigorating the relationship between its inhabitants and their surroundings. The beds in the airy bedrooms sit near the windows to maximize views; baths feature outdoor showers; and a series of decks spill out to an infinity-edge pool surveying the Zululand bushvelds. Here the family might unwind with drinks and revisit the day's safari (or trip to the beach\u2014a dazzling 15-minute helicopter ride over the reserve and the surrounding wetlands and dunes).\n\n\"Two game drives a day are standard issue,\" says Jessica Getty. \"You're up at sunrise to have tea or coffee on the veranda and try to pry your eyes open as the sun's coming up. Then hop a Land Rover with the ranger-tracker and go out in the bush for two or three hours. We're back for breakfast before it starts to get really hot. Then there's a similar thing in the evening. The tracker will have a spotlight, which is amazing because it's a whole different world at night\u2014the lions are very active. Then shower or bath, and dinner might be by the pool or out in the bush with lanterns and a table under the stars. That's a day.\"\n\nIf that's your idea of a day too, welcome to the Phinda Getty House. \"We didn't want the place to be shuttered for the weeks of the year that we can't be there,\" explains Jessica Getty, which is why, during those weeks, they've made the house available for rent through CC Africa. It accommodates eight and comes with its own chef, butler and ranger\u2014in addition to the usual game drives, Phinda offers bush walks, excursions to local villages, and bird-watching and leopard-research safaris\u2014allowing guests as well as proprietors the singular experience of living like royalty and knowing it's all for a good cause."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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