After years of travel writing, I have decided my favourite place on the planet is the western cape of South Africa. This is unfortunate, as I live in Scotland. It’s a long way from Ben Lomond to Table Mountain.

Happily a taste of South Africa has come to Scotland, courtesy of Pete Gottgens, hotelier and occasional chef to Nelson Mandela, who has transformed a 17th century inn into a four star hotel redolent of the Natal highlands around his native Durban.

The setting helps to foster the illusion. His Ardeonaig Hotel stands on the banks of Loch Tay in Perthshire, opposite the towering grandeur of Ben Lawers on a ridge of six peaks that could easily be out of Africa.

Since acquiring the old cattle drovers’ inn, Gottgens has added an extension in Southern African colonial style, complete with iron roof and wooden stoep (terrace) for admiring the views. The landscaped lawns are dotted with rondavels, traditional circular dwellings with thatched roofs that serve as luxury guest accommodation. All that’s missing is a herd of springbok, but they have the next best thing – a cast iron warthog that mysteriously moves around the grounds in the night.

A few years ago Gottgens opened his first eatery in London, which he called the Springbok Cafe. Two days later Mandela walked in and asked if he might have a cup of rooibos tea. The upshot was that Gottgens became Mandela’s personal chef when he was visiting London, supervising dinners at Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street.

He is happier in his own kitchen in the Scottish highlands, where he has set up two tables for guests to dine among the chefs if they wish. It is an innovation that testifies to a smooth culinary operation far removed from Hell’s Kitchens à la Ramsay.

The open door policy extends throughout the hotel, where most of the staff speak with southern African accents. The boss says his staff are “real human beings with real smiles” who don’t have to smile if they don’t feel like it, which translates into friendly and efficient service.

There is no television in the library-cum-lounge. Instead there are panoramic views of loch and mountains, and leather armchairs and settees ranged around heavy wooden tables festooned with ostrich eggs. Afrikaners would feel at home here, downing Castle lagers and reliving a day’s hunting bok and kudu.

Spiralling kudu horns adorn a wall in the breakfast room, along with framed photographs from the Gottgens family album of bush camps and natives in traditional dress. A classic image is of his grandmother as a young woman in Tanzania in the 1950s, sitting in the front seat of a car with a cheetah cub behind her showing great interest in the road ahead. You can almost feel the dry, dusty heat of the bushveld.

The land around Ardeonaig is neither dry nor dusty. Water abounds here – Ben Lawers means "hill of the loud stream" – and nourishes a wilderness that beckons to adventurous spirits. The hotel has acquired an 8,000-acres estate and offers guided walks, photographic deer stalking, and mountain bike rides with lunch served in a remote bothy.

My wife and I opted for a longish cycle ride on country roads around the loch, over the shoulder of Ben Lawers, and into the quiet beauty of Glen Lyon. When we eventually ran out of puff and daylight nine miles from Ardeonaig, we called the hotel and a nice lady from Stellenbosch came and picked us up.

This was when the big bath and Molton Brown toiletries in our rondavel came into their own, generating a haze of fragrant steam to the accompaniment of a burn murmuring through woodland outside our window.

Times recommends

• 'New York has lost its edge'
• The UK and Ireland's 25 best Christmas events
• Chalet Chef 2010: the winners