There is nothing quite like the African bush and you can experience it in so many ways. Take a drive through one of the many provincial or national parks, or stay in a luxury private lodge where you will be pampered like a princess.
Or join an overland excursion, sit back and concentrate on spotting the game while someone else does the driving.
For an absolutely typical game experience, you'll need to visit the lowveld of Limpopo Province, Mpumalanga, North West or KwaZulu-Natal, where elephants lumber gracefully through the bush, and lions rest in the heat of the day after a long night's hunting.
Birds chatter, flitting about from tree to tree, while vervet monkeys groom each other among the leafy branches. Dung beetles roll their heavy loads along the roads, clumsily and steadfastly overcoming every obstacle.
And, unseen, leopards rest deep in the bush camouflaged in the dappled light while zebras graze out in the open, their stripes mingling with the shadows of the grass. Bushbuck skulk in the shadows and kudu elegantly curl their top lips around the tiny, thorn-bedecked leaves of an acacia.
In Gauteng, you'll find small game farms where you can see animals, easily and conveniently, in a semi-natural environment.
The Western Cape has a different climate and vegetation to the rest of South Africa, so the faunal assemblage is also different. You won't find elephants and lions, but you will see springbok, Cape mountain zebra, bontebok, black wildebeest and many others.
The Eastern Cape is transitional between the Western Cape and the lowveld game areas. Once a bit of a backwater, game-wise, this province is rapidly becoming a favourite safari destination, not least because of its malaria-free status. The Addo Elephant National Park is constantly being enlarged and will extend over a huge range of biomes, from marine to mountain. There are some fantastic private reserves in this province, most notably Shamwari.
The Free State does not have much in the way of game parks but the scenic Golden Gate National Park is well known for its high altitude game such as eland and black wildebeest.
The Northern Cape is very arid and is most definitely an acquired taste, but there are some wonderful game destinations. The Augrabies Falls National Park is mostly scenic, but does have some excellent game and wonderful birds.
Tswalu Desert Reserve is a very exclusive upmarket lodge where you will see a variety of desert big game, including rhinos, and the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, Africa's first cross-border park, is famed for its huge, black-maned Kalahari lions and for the elegant, gemsbok, or oryx, which is found there in abundance.
And if the big fluffy animals are not what you're after, you can do a specialist birding safari.
Source: South African Tourism
