Wintering well at The Westcliff

There’s an unfortunate snobbery about the staycation. A holiday, we’ve decided, ought to involve passport control, unfamiliar plumbing, and the loss of at least one afternoon to an airport lounge. Sleeping a few kilometres from your own bed feels like cheating.

This overlooks the chief pleasure of a hotel: being relieved, temporarily and comprehensively, of ordinary life.

My winter staycation at Four Seasons Hotel The Westcliff began less as an escape from Joburg than an ascent above it. The hotel is arranged across the hillside in a series of buildings, terraces and gardens, with views over Forest Town, Saxonwold and Rosebank. From up there, the city loses its hard edges. Even in the dead of winter, the northern suburbs’ urban forest makes our notorious concrete jungle look green and civilised.

The first surprise was the hotel’s new Destination Lobby and Lobby Lounge & Bar. The culmination of a nearly two-year $25m (R421m) transformation, the space is part reception, part drawing room, and part grand urban lookout. Its natural stone, metallic accents and textured finishes allude to Joburg’s mining history without requiring anyone to sit beneath a decorative pickaxe. The enlarged check-in area, new underground parking garage and connection to Flames restaurant and the spa have also made arrival less of a logistical challenge.

Afternoon tea is often described as a light repast … In reality, it is lunch wearing jewellery

It now feels like somewhere you’d want to spend time, rather than a place you just pass through while rummaging for the room key. Natural light pours through the huge windows, and the veranda and 40-seat lounge turn the city into part of the decor. By day, there’s coffee, patisserie and casual dining; by evening, cocktails and the lights of Joburg.

I was whisked from the foyer into a golf cart and up to my room, an indulgently spacious retreat decorated in shades of blue. There was a huge marble bathroom, a balcony overlooking the trees and, crucially in a Joburg July, the perfect heating. The Westcliff’s rooms and suites are distributed among hillside villas and open onto private terraces, which gives the hotel the feeling of a well-run village for people who don’t carry their own luggage.

The theme of the stay was “winter warmer”, which extended beyond the thermostat.

Dinner at Flames presented difficulties pertaining to the menu: too many choices. The cured beef tartare came with bone-marrow croquette, quail egg, jalapeño gel, capers, pickled onion and toasted brioche. Hard to resist.

The mains delivered winter in its most appetising form. At the next table, an American family passing through the concrete jungle on their way to a luxury safari had ordered fillet, which looked delicious. My dinner companion chose roasted pork belly with cauliflower, pea purée, charred Brussels sprouts, guanciale, grilled prawn, apple-ginger salsa and Périgueux sauce.

I committed fully to the season with the Karoo lamb shank. It arrived with pomme purée, ras el hanout carrots, chakalaka, pickled peppers and mint jus: rich, tender and cooked until the meat fell from the bone - food for shutting out the cold.

We accompanied the meat with a dirty martini and a classic margarita. Red wine would have been more orthodox, but it gives me a headache, and adulthood surely confers the right to disregard food-pairing solemnity. Both cocktails were excellent, and neither tried to explain itself.

After dinner came the profound luxury of having nowhere to drive. I returned to the perfectly heated room, disappeared beneath cloud-like duvets and slept through winter as though it were someone else’s problem.

Morning restored the city to view. Breakfast was served on the terrace overlooking Johannesburg Zoo and the trees beyond it. Between the abundant buffet and the à la carte menu, restraint became theoretical. I chose eggs Benedict and ate them in the bright Highveld sun, one of winter’s better compensations for freezing nights and skin with the moisture content of sandpaper.

Then the staycation moved from spoiling to near-total incapacitation. The spa’s new Ubusika Ritual takes its name from the isiZulu word for winter and lasts 90 minutes. It begins with a back massage, followed by a restorative facial mask, a full-body massage and a scalp treatment. Guests select one of three African-inspired shea-butter blends: floral African Sunset, citrus-bright African Daybreak or African Storm, enriched with mongongo nut oil, baobab, fennel and ginger.

I chose to regard the decision as my most demanding responsibility of the morning. The treatment is built around warmth and slowness: it’s not the punishing sort of massage when you’re told that pain is “releasing toxins”. The face is tended to while the body continues relaxing; the scalp massage finishes the job. By the end, I’d lost interest in deadlines, traffic and the opinions of strangers on the internet.

Guests can prolong the surrender in the relaxation room, heated outdoor pool, sauna and steam room.

After surrendering to relaxation, a final duty remained: afternoon tea.

The Westcliff’s long-standing ritual has moved into the new Lobby Lounge & Bar, where executive pastry chef Nathan Jacobs has refreshed it with local ingredients, global influences and enough small, exquisite things to turn daintiness into a serious meal.

It began with warm scones, butter, cream, cheese and homemade strawberry jam. The savouries included egg mayonnaise and cucumber sandwiches, smoked salmon croissants, chicken-and-leek pie, Moroccan lamb pastilla, and mushroom empanadas. Then came the patisserie: chocolate and passion-fruit petit gâteau, pecan and vanilla tart, caramel-naartjie choux, and pistachio and raspberry financier.

The courses were paired with teas created with local tea specialist Nigiro, including marula and strawberry rooibos. A glass of Champagne supplied the necessary punctuation. Afternoon tea is often described as a light repast by people who have plainly never completed one. In reality, it’s lunch wearing jewellery.

Live music on weekends and the new setting prevent it from feeling like a museum piece. The ritual remains recognisable, but it has been loosened from Victorian starch. This is tea as a two-hour pause: less about demonstrating table manners than permitting yourself to be unproductive in an elegant place.

In 24 hours, I’d travelled no meaningful distance, seen no landmark I didn’t already know, and acquired no fridge magnet. But I returned home feeling as though I’d been away. That may be the great corrective offered by a successful staycation. We don’t always need to flee our city to recover from it. Sometimes we need only change the vantage point, let someone else cook dinner, submit to skilled hands and sleep under a better duvet.

I emerged from The Westcliff warm, fed, massaged and restored — ready, or at least considerably more willing, to face the remaining dry, cold weeks of Joburg winter. Spring isn’t here yet, but it’s waiting in the wings. Soon the trees will soften, the afternoons will stretch, and the jacarandas will begin their annual purple takeover.

Until then, winter is easier to tolerate when somebody brings Champagne.

Need to know: The Champagne Afternoon Tea costs R950 per person including French Champagne, or R650 with local MCC. The Ubusika Ritual starts at R2,500. Advance reservations are recommended. Details and prices were supplied by Four Seasons Hotel The Westcliff and were current in July 2026.