Dogs: 7 - Cats: 2

With thanks to Adventure World for this tailor-made holiday.

That was today’s score and it was a marvel. On our morning game drive with Chris, I said I would love to see the endangered and iconic African wild dog, an animal with impressive social skills and one I'd never encountered before – so that's what he delivered to us, just like that. At first there were only a few, loping along, looking for prey; but leaving them and working on information from other rangers and tracks in the dust, Chris found us something quite unusual. It was a lone female, lying panting in the shade of a bush, recovering from the exertion of having just chased down and killed, solo, an impala, which lay on the dried mud. Wild dogs hunt together, so it was quite an achievement for this one to have succeeded alone. She rewarded herself with a snack on impala guts before loping off to fetch the others back for their share.

They came running, and as we watched from the LandCruiser from a few metres’ distance, they dispatched the impala in only six minutes. Pretty impressive work for just seven dogs. There was eager whimpering but no fighting as they ate, and when all the soft bits were gone they each dragged bones into the shade to lie down and crunch on. Then they trotted busily off again, back to the den where 13 pups awaited with their baby-sitter for their (regurgitated) shares of the meal.

Witnessing all that was a triumph, and near impossible to top – but Chris did manage to find us two lions that evening. One of them had recently swum across the Zambezi from Zimbabwe on the other shore, two kilometres away, to settle in the reserve – amazing, especially considering the river’s full of crocodiles. They were magnificent, regal animals, and when they looked us full in the eyes from about seven metres away, we felt very insignificant.

On the way back in the dark, after our gin and tonics drunk as the big, red African sun dropped down below the escarpment, we almost became the meat in an elephant sandwich. Eles rule wherever they go, and humans tiptoe around them. So when they’re standing in the middle of the road browsing on a tree in front of you, what you do is sit in your vehicle and wait patiently for them to move on, fervently hoping that the crashing in the bush you can hear isn’t another one about to emerge on the road behind you and take exception to your being in the way.

The night finished with a surprise: the promised porcupine site we were expecting turned out to be a bush dinner for all the guests: we saw lights and fire, and were presented with deck chairs around a fire, a bar, a long table all set and lit by lanterns, and a 3-course dinner waiting. Well done, Royal Zambezi – that was a delightful surprise, delicious, and entertaining. What an excellent day!

Zooming into Zambia

With thanks to Adventure World for this tailor-made holiday.

Today was one of those tedious travel days you can’t avoid – but it got better. Cape Town to Joburg to Lusaka in Zambia, each flight two hours; then another half-hour in a little 4-seater with pilot Rajith to deliver us via a bush airstrip to our home for the next three days, Royal Zambezi Lodge.

The stay began well with a family of elephants right on the road as we drove to the lodge in the open-topped LandCruiser with Chris, local man and our guide for the stay. Natalie welcomed us in the open lounge right beside the Zambezi River, the grassy shore dotted with elephants grazing and drinking, and the soundtrack provided by grunting, guffawing hippos in the water. Magic!

There are so many animals around this unfenced property that at night we have to be escorted to and from our suite, just in case. Besides elephants, they saw a leopard come through last night, and there are baboons and hippos. Exciting. And our suite was pretty gorgeous, too: a Presidential one, Frontier, right at the end of the complex, with canvas walls and a thatched roof, mozzie net-draped bed, big copper bath, outside solar-heated shower, private pool, and a day-bed outside for lying in comfort as you watch the elephants, too close to need binoculars.

Back in the public area, we sat at the bar over the water and under a huge sausage tree, lights twinkling across on the Zimbabwe shore, hippos honking, fireflies dancing over head, and ate the best potato crisps ever, home-made and ridiculously moreish considering the delicious 3-course dinner to come. We were served that on the deck beside an open fire, lanterns along the railing, a frog chorus coming out of the darkness, stars above, the air warm. And then there was music – five men energetically singing and dancing along to a drum, quintessentially African and the perfect end to the day.

A day in Cape Town

With thanks to Adventure World for this tailor-made holiday.

According to bilingual Egon, who showed us around Cape Town this afternoon, “All guides speak nonsense”. Probably true, but his descriptions of what he showed us were so wry that I couldn’t accuse him of embellishment.

There’s no ‘of course’ about going up Table Mountain: the cloud is notoriously fitful and unpredictable, but Egon reckoned it was worth a try. So we trundled up remarkably quickly in the round, rotating cable-car, and were lucky to get a good view over the city, the sea and out to Robben Island, although everything else was blotted out on the other sides. Cape Town is a remarkably small city, in area, though its population of 3.5 million includes about 2 million migrants living in the tin-shack shantytowns we drove past on the way in from Bushman’s Kloof this morning.

They were all on the road, though. The traffic was awful, much to Egon’s chittering frustration. We did manage to visit the wonderfully colourful Bo Kaap suburb, its houses painted brilliantly bright colours; and drove past many lovely and stately Victorian municipal and governmental buildings. At the Natural History Museum, it was unexpected that the first animals I saw were a moa skeleton and stuffed kiwi – but beyond them were plenty of iconic African species, though all of them were looking a little moth-eaten I have to say.

Out in the gardens, bold squirrels, cautious cats and relaxed Egyptian geese were as un-endemic as the moa inside, but it was pretty there, and included a 350 year-old tree, still fruiting. There was also a statue of Cecil Rhodes, arm raised. “Good thing it’s the left one,” I said, a moment before Egon made the same joke to his fellow Germans on our tour. (He also made a reference later to “our friend Adolf” which seemed a little risqué, even now.)

The evening is a lovely time to wander around the V&A Waterfront. That’s as in Victoria and Alfred, not Albert. Alfred was her son, who accompanied Vic on a visit here – most unusual, she never really went anywhere apart from Scotland and the Isle of Wight. Anyway, it’s all welcoming restaurants and big-name shops in the three-storey mall, interesting shops of African arts and crafts, a big Ferris wheel, lighthouses and boats. You can catch the ferry here to Robben Island, if you have more time than us. As it got darker the lights were reflected in the water, there was twinkling, and music too from a busking group of nine a cappella singers giving a proper African flavour to what could otherwise have been the south of France. Or even Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter, at a stretch.

There is good eating to be done here (I'm still somewhat sad at missing out on dining at La Colombe thanks to our late arrival in the city a few days ago). The restaurant we chose looked good but the food and service were only average. My opinion might, of course, be jaundiced thanks to the cockroach that ran across my foot shortly after the mains were delivered…

Exploring Bushman's Kloof

With thanks to Adventure World for this tailor-made holiday.

Bushman’s Kloof is a wellness retreat as well as a game reserve, so you could of course sleep in and then prostrate yourself before the masseuse – but when there are animals out there? What a waste. So we set off in the LandCruiser, bundled up against the cold on a bright morning, to see what we could see. Zebra, red hartebeest, dainty springbok, bontebok, birds – and beetles, in this case dung beetles industriously rolling balls of dung to a suitable place to bury for laying eggs in.

The main focus of the morning game drives is the cave art they have here, red ochre paintings of people and animals thousands of years old, and handprints a bit more recent. Many of them were surprisingly delicate and beautiful, and fitted in well with Nature’s artwork of stripes of red, orange and black on the weathered sandstone.

I saw more of that on my Mountain Trail walk from the lodge in the middle of the day (what with rusks and coffee on the game drive and then a full breakfast back on the terrace at the lodge, lunch was dispensable). Though the lack of big game here may seem like a disadvantage, it does mean that it’s possible to go walking on your own in complete safety, so you can get up close with the surroundings and make a real connection of a sort that’s not possible when you’re confined to the buildings and the vehicle. In Africa, this is a real novelty.

So I followed the trail of stone cairns and got up close with the amazing rock formations, the many wild flowers blooming here at the moment, the butterflies, lizards and beetles. The only animals out at that time of day was a colony of rock hyraxes, or dassies: cute and bouncy, keeping watch from high points and scuttling for cover as I approached.

The evening game drive took us further into the reserve’s 7,500 hectares, with the reward of lots of zebra, a herd of bulky eland, some skittish rehbok and a blended family of ostriches with several dozen babies. There was also an Amarula sundowner with a view across a valley to some pretty striking mountains that got the Norwegian geologist in our group frothing with (non-catching) excitement. I preferred to look the other way to watch the sun drop and the sepia sky begin to prick with stars.

The tables at the lodge are all set for two, which seems a bit solitary after the sociability of Rovos Rail. It would have been nice to share our enjoyment of the day, and the delicious food, with others – or, alternatively, grab the best table, the one in front of the roaring log fire. But though I got there early on purpose, that one had been bagsed already, with coats left on the chairs. I eavesdropped on that couple later. They were German.