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The Wildest Animal Encounter
Staring Down a Roaring Lion (private game reserves in Mpumalanga, Limpopo Province, the North-West, and Botswana): Tourists are notoriously hungry for shots of big cats, and if you spend 2 nights at one of the top private game reserves, you will certainly get close to lions and leopards, often on the first drive. If you're lucky enough to get close enough to have your vehicle shuddering from the powerful noise that erupts from the king of the jungle's gut, you are talking a truly wild-animal encounter.
Waiting for a Leopard to Finish Its Dinner (private game reserves, the North-West, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal): Holing up in your room while a leopard gnaws its dinner outside your door might happen at any of the private game-reserve lodges that are set in the bush. Animals roam freely in this environment, and if dinner happens to be on your patio, celebrate the fact that you're not it and plunder the minibar.
Stalking a Rhino on Foot (Kruger National Park, Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Reserve): Tracking rhino is no mean feat: They can smell humans up to 800m (2,624 ft.) away. Being on foot, with only the sounds of the bush and your beating heart as you crouch just meters from an animal as large as a tank, is unbeatable. For the best rhino-tracking experience, stay at Royal Malewane lodge, in the Thornybush game reserve adjoining Kruger. You will almost definitely track white rhino on the Bushman, Wolhuter, and Napi trails run by Kruger National Park, as well as on the Umfolozi trails run by Hluhluwe-Umfolozi.
Swimming with Penguins (Boulders Beach, Cape Town): This is a beautiful place to swim; large boulders create natural swimming pools shared by the only land-breeding colony of jackass penguins. Watch them waddle and dive through the crystal-clear waters, which are slightly warmer than the Atlantic seaboard side -- cold comfort, considering how icy that is.
Baiting Great White Sharks (Hermanus and Mossel Bay, Western Cape): Descend in a steel cage to meet Jaws up close and personal. Specialist tour operators offer controversial cage diving off Dyer Island in "Shark Alley," where great whites hunt the resident seal population. Sharks swim within spitting distance of cages -- not that there's much to spit when your mouth is dry with fear.
Watching Rare Turtles Nest (Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal): In November and December the female leatherback and loggerhead turtles leave the safety of the sea at night to lay their eggs above the high-tide mark on the northern beaches of KwaZulu-Natal. Two months later hatchlings scramble out of their nests and make a run for the ocean. Only one or two out of every thousand make it to maturity; these survivors return to the same beach to produce the next generation.
Avoiding a Territorial Hippo (Victoria Falls, Okavango Delta): The upper reaches of the Zambezi and the Okavango Delta's watery channels are best explored by gliding along in a canoe, or mokoro, but you're also more than likely to meet a hippo this way. Always treat them with respect -- despite a relatively docile appearance, they are Africa's most dangerous mammal and responsible for more deaths than crocodiles or lions.
Note: This information was accurate when it was published, but can change without
notice. Please be sure to confirm all rates and details directly with the companies in question before
planning your trip.
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