Kruger National Park

• The Cape Escape - Cape Town
• My Mountain High in Cape Town - Cape Town
• The Drop Zone - Cape Town
• On the trail to true adventure - Johannesburg
• The great es-Cape - Cape Town
• Come into the Garden - The Garden Route
• My Zulu Extravaganza - Durban
• Up Close and Personal - South African Safari
• Tracking Big Game - Kruger National Park
• Sleeping with the Lions - South African Safari
• A Safari with real pride - South African Safari
• Where the Lion King comes to Life - South African Safari
• Our guide to the top 10 safaris - South African Safari
• A Roaring Success - Victoria Falls
• Come into the Garden - The Garden Route
• The Worlds Most Beautiful Road? - The Garden Route
• Zipping off to Zanzibar - Zanzibar, Kenya
• Africa's catch of the day - Mozambique
• The Cape escape… and it was right up my Street - Garden Route: South Africa
• The nation kissed by a rainbow - South Africa
• Our wild silver wedding! - Kenya

SORRY, BUT ELEPHANTS WERE blocking the road…’ Was our plaintive excuse on arriving late for dinner under a full moon in the African bush.

Our minds were reeling with images of the animals we had just seen – yawning hippos, pacing lions, a honey badger breaking for cover, a crocodile gnawing at a giraffe it had caught carelessly bending for a drink at a waterhole. All exciting stuff but, dammit, we were late – and dinner at Royal Malewane, probably the most luxurious safari lodge in Africa, is something to be taken seriously.

Our table had been carried for four miles to be placed under a magnificent marula tree laid with a starched linen tablecloth and rows of silver cutlery and crystal glasses. Around us, pine logs burned fiercely in four iron braziers, producing a heady scent. Hurricane lamps and candles cast shadows towards an antique wooden sofa perched on a Persian carpet, instantly creating a private, wall-less sitting room in the open veldt.

Elegant bush scene

This elegant bush scene had been artfully choreographed by John Jackson, a chef so good that Sir Elton John had his recipes and ingredients sent to England after he and his party had taken over the camp, with its six private thatched cottages, on the fringes of the Kruger National Park.

Jackson is something of a legend in his native South Africa. Trained at the Moulin de Mougins in the south of France, his cooking is underpinned by that impeccable French groundwork. There is no menu. Jackson prepares food of great subtlety and originality as if in a private house, while nearby baboons howl and monkeys scream.

To call Royal Malewane a safari camp is like saying Claridge’s offers a decent enough bed. It misses the point. This is five-star living in the wild: ditch any notions you may have of roughing it with luke-warm makeshift showers, brown Windsor soup, clouds of mosquitoes, long-drop loos and flapping tents. This is very exclusive, very private, and there are no other travellers in sight – safari as a luxury fantasy, Indiana Jones crossed with untrammelled hedonism.

Take the Royal Suite or Room 8 as it is more prosaically labelled. It is actually more villa than a room, with butler, masseuse and chef on call 24 hours a day.

As well as the colonial-style master bedroom, there is a spare bedroom, a cricket-pitch sized dining room-cum-drawing room, a fully equipped kitchen (for the chef, not you) and two bathrooms grand enough to be in a decorator’s showroom.

Here they believe that more can mean more, hence 17 towels in each bathroom.

This is a favourite place for those who crave privacy. Bono, Sir Elton John, Calvin Klein and Juliet Binoche have all slipped between the cotton sheets of Room 8’s antique four-posters. They have dipped into the private swimming pool and hot tub, and chilled on the wooden deck that feels almost the size of a football pitch.

Royal Malewane’s owner is Liz Biden, a former fashionista who has created a portfolio of three luxury hotels in South Africa – almost by accident. She loves decorating and entertaining, and the combination somehow metamorphosed into a business. She thinks no detail is too small to ignore, but she also thinks big, which is why she has just installed a 25-metre heated swimming pool and expanded the spa at Malewane.

It is tempting, at times just to hide away in your rooms if you do not fancy another early morning game drive. And it is quite possible never to see any other guests, because the rooms are tucked away from each other. If you wish, you can eat in your room or terrace. In the royal suite, your guide and tracker will pick you up directly from your room, bypassing the need to go into the main part of the camp at all.

Essential to any safari is your guide. At Royal Malewane a tracker sits in a special jump-seat on the front of the open Land Rover, looking for trails, scratchings, pawmarks, any movements of the soil to help find the animals.

You want to see a leopard?

And with reasonable luck, the tracker will find what you want. You want to see a leopard? He’ll find you a leopard. The head guide, Juan, can list every tree, bird, animal, reptile and bush; he can even tell you their Latin genus.

You stop for a sundowner just as the moon is rising on the horizon, and he whisks out his drinks cabinet, some delicious nibbles, and a close-up of the moon or Saturn. Right on cue, Juan peels off the statistics: how many light years away are Mars and Pluto.

Here, wild nature and man’s creature comfort come together perfectly. Just when you feel lulled into thinking that you are in a perfect country house hotel, guests are reminded that an armed guard must escort them after dark between their room and the main reception – the staff take security as seriously as they do luxury.

The realities of Africa can suddenly jolt you. As I stepped out of the shower one day, I almost jumped out of my skin at the sight of a nyala – a striped antelope the size of a donkey – pressing its nose against the plate-glass wall. It is not uncommon for an elephant to reach over and cheekily slip its trunk into your private pool for a long slurp of water as you sit on a sun lounger on your deck. The masseuse had a fright one evening when a pride of lions settled down around the spa, presumably mistaking it for a waterhole. However, so long as you follow the obvious safety rules, it is quite safe.

You can visit Royal Malewane for a long weekend because of the small time difference. Leave Heathrow on Friday night, arrive Johannesburg the next morning, take a one-hour hop in a small plane and be there in time for lunch.