From our base here, nothing excites us more than opening the gates to the private reserves that share an unfenced border with Kruger National Park.

 

Sabi Sand, MalaMala, Timbavati, Klaserie, Thornybush and Singita; names that read like a private honour roll of the finest wildlife real estate on earth.

 

This is where leopards hunt by in broad daylight, where lions still own the roads at night, and where the guiding remains unsurpassed. Travellers who know return here again and again because nothing else quite matches the intensity and intimacy of these concessions.

 

Further afield, Madikwe offers malaria-free Big Five drama for families, Zululand guards the continent’s strongest white-rhino populations, and the Eastern Cape reserves slip classic safari into a gentle landscape of ocean and fynbos, only a morning’s drive from the Winelands and Cape Town.