South Africa

• 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
• The chic side of this Rainbow Nation - South Africa
• The Cape escape - South Africa
• Game On! - South Africa

HOW WE SPOTTED all the Big Five at Sabi Sands

There is a leopard under our car, writes Matt Warren. She is a young female, perhaps four years old, and she has stopped there, mid-stalk, for a quick breather. I’ve been on the trail of leopards before – and they are frustratingly elusive. In Brazil, a week of looking yielded only a pile of droppings.

In Sri Lanka, a single footprint. South Africa, evidently, is different. Just ten minutes after a slap-up, sunrise breakfast and we discover this most magnificent of cats strolling nonchalantly down the dirt track towards our lodge. ‘She comes round here a lot and particularly likes a nap in the gym,’ says our guide, Hannes. ‘She even conceived her cubs on the rug in reception. That was quite a sight.’

We’ve followed her for a mile, down tracks, across a dry river bed and through thick bush, before she decides our car is just the spot for a lie down.

But then, out of the blue, she bolts out of the blocks and into an explosive sprint. It’s a hare. The two animals leap and bound in circles, inches from one another.

But the cat’s final, stretching lunge falls just short of the hare’s hindquarters, and it vanishes down a hole to safety. A stunned silence hangs over our car. We are in Sabi Sands Private Game Reserve, on the western edge of South Africa’s Kruger National Park.

Our spectacular lodge, Leopard Hills, has eight gorgeous rooms with private plunge pools, and overlooks a watering hole visited by elephant, zebra, rhino and buffalo. As my wife Genevieve and I eat alfresco under a blaze of stars, we talk over the roar of lions and the sawing bark of leopards.

Being a private reserve, tourist numbers are strictly controlled. And the animals return the favour – by being uniquely approachable.

The day after the leopard sighting, a 30-strong herd of elephants has staked its claim to the lodge’s access road. And again, they don’t so much as trumpet as we trundle towards them in our Land Rover.

Five most dangerous

As we sit transfixed, ten-ton tuskers that could toss our car like a Coke can gently pick at the foliage around us. Safari chat often concerns the Big Five of elephant, rhino, buffalo, lion and leopard – so named because they are the five most dan-gerous animals to hunt on foot.

On our third day, we run into them all before elevenses. We are up at 5.30am every day, and at sunrise a male lion makes his presence felt. The whole of Sabi Sands is controlled by a successful cartel of six males, brothers who have killed 40 male imposters.

They are rarely all seen together, but they stay in contact with the occasional roar. I’ve seen The Lion King, but a lion’s roar has to be heard to be believed. As we sit just feet away, Simba crouches, inhales and bellows out a thunderous noise. It can be heard 25 miles away.

A cup of coffee and a muffin later we find the young female leopard again. Again she’s the showgirl, getting chased off by a feisty, battle-scarred zebra stallion, before leading us right to a female white rhino and her young calf.

The rhino is a Jurassic tank of a creature. But only in the presence of the buffalo do I feel threatened.

Our guide says this is the beast he’d least like to run into while walking through the bush. The only creature we miss is the infamous honey badger, the Viking bush berserker, a metrelong mammal that will attack elephant and lion, shrug off snake venom and fight dirty – apparently it goes for your privates.

They are also incredibly shy – just as well. We go home with one regret: that in London, we will never, ever, find a leopard under our car.

Meanwhile, Rod Gilchrist is ready for lights! camera! lions! at Shamwari in the Eastern Cape

Star in your own Born Free movie at Shamwari

Out on the grassy plains of the South African savannah, a film crew was busy shooting. The two stars were dressed in safari jackets and bush hats.

A boom mike caught every word of wonder at the sight of a pride of lions drinking at dawn in the muddy waters of the Bushmans River.

The shot took in the panorama of Shamwari game reserve in the Eastern Cape — its forests and cliffs, where eagles soar over herds of gazelles. Now the cameraman was coming in for a close-up of Kate Johnson, from London, who felt a bit like Meryl Streep in Out Of Africa. ‘Oh, isn’t it lovely,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe I’m really here. Beyond the lions I can see elephants.

It’s just lovely.’ Perhaps the dialogue wouldn’t win an Oscar, but when Kate plays her 30-minute DVD to friends, she’ll be a star. At Shamwari visitors can star in their own documentary. A professional camera team films guests as their Land Rovers stalk leopards and giraffe, buffalo and rhino.

It’s not cheap, at £800, but comes fully edited and complete with titles, music and sweeping shots of wildlife and landscape. Lyndal Davies, a professional filmmaker, who produces Animal Planet for the Discovery Channel, is the Spielberg of the veldt. She says the idea is ‘to give everybody the chance at playing David Attenborough and to front their very own wildlife show’.

It is not hard to see the attractions of this film set: Shamwari is a magical 30,000 hectares of malariafree savannah, an hour from Port Elizabeth and ten miles from the cooling Indian Ocean breezes.

It has rolling hills, wooded valleys, lush plains and an abundance of wildlife. The game reserve was established 20 years ago when local businessman and dedicated conservationist Adrian Gardiner bought a holiday farm, and then decided to buy more land and renovate farmhouses and old manors.

John Travolta often hires Eagles Crag, a thatched hideaway. Long Lee Manor, once home of a Scottish emigrant who made his fortune mending wagon wheels in the 19th century, hosted Baroness Thatcher and in the hall there is a photo taken during her stay. I came with Virginia McKenna, star of the Oscar-winning film Born Free, which followed the rehabilitation of Elsa the lioness.

Her animal rescue foundation, which last year celebrated its 25th anniversary, was carrying out a remarkable project. Born Free transported brother and sister leopards from a cage in Monaco zoo to a life of freedom.

Adrian Gardiner has given the foundation two large sanctuaries in which to re-home big cats that have been cruelly treated or locked away in zoos.

It is lifeenhancing to see these beautiful creatures, their silk tan fur with its distinctive black rosettes, revel under big African skies. And charming footage is shot of little Themba, a baby elephant orphaned when its mother was killed after falling down a cliff. Themba is being cared for in a sanctuary until she can be rehabilitated with a herd. And you never saw a sweeter Dumbo.

Run and you are dead

Those feeling brave take a walking safari with a ranger armed with a Winchester Magnum 458.

It is certainly a walk on the wild side, but you do get a real feel for the animals. I went out with Keir Lynch, who cheerfully told me: ‘If anything happens, stand up and make yourself look big. Run and you are dead.

A lion moves at 80km an hour, a cheetah at 110km. ‘But most lion charges are just to scare you. They usually pull up ten metres away. I

reckon I could get three shots off before they reached us so don’t worry.’ I’m only glad Lyndal Davies wasn’t filming my reaction when I received these sobering instructions.

I don’t think it’s a video I would want to see.