It takes, I am told, 15 to 20 minutes for a pride of lions to eat you. By that time nothing, repeat nothing, will be left of you except a few torn bits of clothing. It happened not so long ago to a Japanese tourist who was foolish enough to get out of his car in the Kruger National Park in South Africa to take pictures of a number of photogenic and sleepy-looking big cats. Then there was the professional photographer who wanted just one more picture, though warned that the elephant he was snapping was getting a bit touchy. It charged him from 100 yards away and caught him before he could get to safety. Goodbye.
These stories were told to me by some game rangers - a jovial bunch, though they do like to make the flesh creep. As part of a trip to South Africa organised by Tourism Africa, I was visiting the Timbavati Reserve, one of a number of privately-owned areas that abut and have open boundaries with the Kruger which, at approximately the size of Scotland, is the world's biggest wild game park. It is a unique and thrilling experience and one that, despite the fact that big wild animals are undoubtedly to be approached with care, is not at all a dangerous one. What's more, it can be done in conditions of considerable comfort from base camps which contain all the amenities of a Grade A hotel - swimming pools, comfortable rooms and fine cuisine.
The first of these, M'Bali, is a tented camp on a hillside, but forget about sleeping in discomfort with only a width of canvas between you and prowling man-eaters. The tents, which are as big as sizeable double bedrooms, are pitched on platforms with thatched roofs over them, while underneath are bathrooms with all mod cons. They overlook a, currently, dried-up water hole and one can sit on one's balcony, as I did, and watch elephants, wart hogs and a variety of exotic birds go by. Nights are peaceful, apart from the occasional growl and scream. I was convinced once that something was being torn apart, but it turned out next morning it had only been two rival gangs of baboons having a battle.
During the day and into the night one goes out driving in Land Rovers with the rangers and their trackers, who squat on the bonnets of the motors and, by a seemingly uncanny ability to read tracks, direct the drivers towards animals. The bush does not give itself up readily to the first-time visitor. Instead of the rolling plains I had expected one gets mile after mile of, well, bushes, scrubby trees and thorns with only occasional open spaces. But the beauty of its huge dried up, sandy river beds, its sudden water holes and its unending variety of plant and animal life gets to one quickly.
In summer (our winter) it turns green, making its inhabitants harder to see, but in the springtime - September - when I was there, they kept materialising suddenly, almost miraculously, it seemed out of nowhere. Apart from rhinoceros and hippos we saw almost everything; elephants, lions, giraffes, zebras, impala, waterbuck, hyenas, wild dogs, a large black mamba snake, huge buffalo (regarded by the rangers as the most unpredictable and dangerous of all animals) and many others. There were thrilling moments: driving through a herd of big tuskers, who scattered in every direction trumpeting loudly and seemed for a heart-stopping second to be about to turn on us; learning to drive the rangers' four-wheel-drive vehicles over sizeable trees and up the sides of almost sheer river banks, and shooting their high-powered rifles, inaccurately, at large lumps of elephant dung; coming up in the pitch dark on three large and indifferent lionesses; following a leopardess marking out her territory, so close that we could have leaned out and touched her, if we were foolish enough. It is the stuff of schoolboy and schoolgirl fantasy, with the adult comfort of knowing that at the end of the day you're going back to a shower and a good meal around a camp fire.
If you want a more basic experience, the Timbavati game park authorities are about to open another small camp, where one can learn over two or three days something of the skills of a ranger. Sleeping in smaller, six-bed tents in the bush and cooking their own meals, visitors will learn the basics of recognising the flora and fauna of the area, how to track animals (never to shoot them - a ranger who does this except in the utmost emergency is liable to find himself out of work) how to find one's way in the wilderness and all the other many skills that go with the job.
On our last day in the game park we moved to another camp, Motswari. Here the accommodation is based on traditional African round thatched huts, but the huts are as big as small ballrooms and the beds large enough to hold a couple of fair-sized elephants. It's a more sedate and more luxurious setting than M'Bali but provided me with my biggest thrill of the visit. Having declined a drive that started at 5 a.m., I found myself instead out on foot at seven in the morning with a ranger. As we walked along, chatting while he showed me animals, birds (the reserve's bird check list mentions 483 species) and insects, he suddenly spotted fresh leopardess tracks, said we were going to follow them and told me to stand behind him in case he had to use his rifle. We tracked her for 45 minutes and got very near, but eventually she gave us the slip, though not before I'd had the sort of adrenalin rush I thought I'd stopped having when I was 14. The second half of our sampling of South Africa - a huge country, bigger in size than France and Germany combined - was very different. It took us to the Eastern Cape.
Cape Town is the country's most popular tourist destination, followed by the coastline to its east, known as the Garden Route. Many tourists also visit the more tropical parts around Durban, but in between the two, around the city of Port Elizabeth, is undeservedly less well known. It's a country of great variety, beautiful rolling green plains dotted with farms, of distant, dramatic mountains, tropical forests full of their own wildlife, big winding rivers and of mile after mile of virtually empty, white beaches on which the Indian Ocean breaks in spectacular waves.
This is a quiet land, where you can drive easily on traffic-free roads. You can surf or swim in seas that, in September, were about as warm as on a good summer's day in Ireland (remember them?). They get warmer as the South African summer advances and, also, the further east and more into the tropics one goes. You can, too, go riding on those wonderful beaches or fly, above them, as I did, in a small plane, spotting a huge whale and her calf in the water below.
The small towns are spotless, Anglicised and have a faint aura of the 1960s about them (more on the African element later). It's not a place, I would think, for those who want a lively time with bars and clubs and the like. But for those of an outdoors bent, or just looking for peace and a delightful climate, this is a place to go.
One of the area's attractions is the Tsitsikama Forest, a tropical paradise that runs beside the sea, full of birds and flowers, through which one can take guided hikes of varying length. I drew the line at the world's highest bungee jump. Hooked up in a suit and attached by ropes, one dives 216 metres into an awesome gorge. It costs about £50 to do it and, quite frankly, I wouldn't if you paid me £50,000.
I did, however, take a rafting trip down the same gorge, through which run the black but pure waters of the Storm river. I'd been told it was going to be easy so, despite some misgivings when I signed a disclaimer saying the organisers were not responsible in the event of snake bite or shark attack, I found myself descending the precipitous cliffs in wet suit and crash helmet.
Maybe it was because I was 25 years older than anybody else, but I quickly discovered I'd been misinformed about the easy bit. Carrying or sitting in big inflated rings like car tubes, we scrambled over slippy rocks, me falling repeatedly, shot the rapids, floated down calmer sections and (me again) repeatedly fell head over heels into the deep water. Eventually I got the hang if it, more or less, with the help of our energetic and cheerful young woman guide, and didn't get bitten by a snake, though a large white spider did make a landing on my shoe.
By now, however, we were nearing the river mouth (here, betimes, be sharks) and instead of being carried along by the river were paddling furiously against the tide with our hands. The whole trip takes three hours and, yes, I did enjoy it, especially the ridiculous sense of achievement when I'd changed into dry clothes and got outside for something warming.
Our trip ended in style at the small and luxurious Hacklewood Hill Country House in Port Elizabeth, the sort of place that's surrounded by a spectacular garden with the inevitable pool, has a top restaurant and rooms to die for.
South Africa has an unenviable reputation for violent crime, particularly in the cities, and electric gates, guard dogs and alarms seem everywhere in middle class areas. Like most such places, however, much depends on where you go and when and, if one is careful, there's not much to worry about.
This is a travel article, not a political one, but it seems to me that one cannot really experience the country without getting at least a glimpse of the life of the townships, those vast, fast-growing shanty towns that lie on the outskirts of every centre of population. In a land on the cusp of change, one feels that this is where the future lies. The days of apartheid belong to history, mourned by few (or if they do, they don't show it) but there is, one senses, an unease among white people about what the future may hold.
But this is no reason not to visit a country of quite outstanding and varied beauty, blessed with a delightful year-round climate and friendly people. What's more (particularly now the rand is weak) once you get there, it's amazingly good value.
All the holidays outlined can be booked through Carrier Tours (telephone in UK 0044 01625 582006, fax 0044 01625 586818). Motswari and M'Bali camps are members of the Small Exclusive Hotels of Southern Africa group, together with Hacklewood Hill Country House in Port Elizabeth (telephone in UK 004 01473 225844). British Airways (reservations number 1800 626 747) has daily scheduled flights to South Africa.