South African safari

Untamed wilderness
The roads in the Madikwe are of the dirt variety, and this is one of the charms of such a comparatively undiscovered reserve. In the Kruger, for instance, you can end up spotting more tourists than animals - not great if it's untamed wilderness that you're after. Even though it's small by comparison with the Kruger, you can still see the big five (lion, elephant, rhino, leopard and buffalo) in Madikwe, as well as every kind of plains antelope, endangered species such as wild dogs, and 350 species of dazzling birds. There are no day visitors - and definitely no crowds - and you stay in one of a handful of luxury lodges inside the reserve.

Besides the River Lodge, we stayed at the Tau Game Lodge - right on an enormous watering hole that drew lots of game every day - and Jaci's Camp, where our room had an open fire for cold winter nights and an outdoor shower for the hot winter days. Huge breakfasts or brunches are served when you return from your early morning drive and, in the evening after the second drive of the day, you have dinner under the stars either around an open fire in the 'boma' - an outside room surrounded by a bamboo palisade - or a 'braai' - a South African barbecue - out in the bush with only the fires to keep the animals at bay.

Most of the time, though, you are getting as close as you can to some very wild animals indeed and having daily encounters with life and death in the African wilderness. A pack of wild dogs killed a water buck in front of our room at Tau Lodge, a family of around 30 elephants arrived at the water hole at sunset and disappeared silently into the dusk, a rhino mother showed off her ten-stone baby. Most dramatic of all was the family of nine lionesses preparing for their evening hunt. Two of them squabbled and growled over a piece of antelope skin, the matriarch chased off a lone juvenile male and they paced around our Land Rover in the twilight at times close enough to touch.