Into Africa

Looking to really get away on your next vacation? Try a safari – if you have the guts.

GEOGRAPHICALLY SPEAKING, AFRICA IS SPLITTING APART. This fissure, slow but sure, provides some of the world’s most rewarding escapes. The last time the continent split, it gave us South America. For now, we must happily settle for a rift valley that runs from Ethiopia through Botswana. The most spectacular section of this rift runs from Victoria Falls and southward. This area is noteworthy for numerous reasons: amazing game and eco-adventures, unique and diverse ecology, and the very appealing lack of people and vehicles cluttering the landscape.

The Africa Adventure Company, a Florida-based tour-booking operation, offers excellent advice on the many forks in Africa’s roads, tailored to interests, budgets and timing. Among the options in southern Africa, many are associated with award-winning safari operator Wilderness Safaris (www.wilderness-safaris.com). Many camps underpin worthwhile environmental and community projects, which are of increasing importance to many who are concerned with the impacts of their travel choices. Fellow guests – generally a worldly and eclectic group – are another attraction.

THE RIVER CLUB, VICTORIA FALLS: One of Africa’s classiest acts, the River Club is located in Zambia near Victoria Falls. Converted from a colonial-style home, the resort also includes 10 split-level bungalows that overhang the Zambezi River, with its numerous hippos and crocodiles. Local activities range from hiking across Victoria Falls, to fishing for Tiger fish, to rafting the Zambezi, a class-five ride that many rafters consider to be top-of-the-line. Another thriller is the Zambezi Swing, a 53-meter free-fall down a sheer cliff that whips users into a pendulum across treetops and boulders. But the most thought-provoking offering is nearby Simonga village, “adopted” by River Club owner Peter Jones, who often enlists his guests to assist the villagers. Victories thus far include a school, medical assistance and water wells that have liberated women from hauling water from the river.

JACK’S CAMP, KALAHARI DESERT, BOTSWANA: This 1940s-style classic safari camp, surrounded by umbrella thorns and desert palms, is situated amid the massive Makgadikgadi salt pans. The camp’s main tent is a museum of everything you wanted as a kid – skeletons, stuffed lions, a billiards table, etc. As is the case with most camps, seasons and rainfall dictate the dominant activities. When things are dry, guests tear across the vast, empty pans on quad bikes. When the pans become soggy, huge bird migrations, including flamingo flocks, provide the entertainment. As the wet season approaches, game drives can follow vast herds of zebras and wildebeests as they move continually toward the lightning and dark clouds, seeking the life-sustaining rains. But the best offerings are the game and nature hikes with the famed Kalahari bushmen, who impart their hard-won lore of survival. (How did they figure out that a particular beetle that feeds on a particular tree produces a poison they can use on arrows without contaminating the meat of their prey?)

SKELETON COAST CAMP, NAMIBIA: The Skeleton Coast is the most appropriately named locale on earth. Plentiful bones – including those of shipwrecks – mark the region. The grinder-like reefs have claimed many victims throughout the years. Even if sailors miraculously made it ashore, no boat could rescue them. The wayward seamen usually didn’t last long, surrounded by the vast Namib desert and, beyond that, the Kalahari.

That isolation is maintained at a camp limited to 12 people in a park of more than 2,000 square miles. Flora and fauna are scarce, but fascinating in their adaptations. The hemisphere’s unfamiliar constellations and brilliant stars enhance the sense of being on another planet. Sculptural dunes have peculiar sands that sound like bull fiddles when you jump or slide down them. Canyons conceal desert elephants, oryx, baboons and lions that prey on fur seals. The amiable, mystical Himba people – living as they have for centuries – offer fascinating insight into a vanishing civilization. Faced by a changing world, they’re a culture living on borrowed time, but they’d probably view Survivor as a Three Stoogesfestival.

JAO CAMP: The Okavango Delta is an end-of-the-rift miracle of wetlands and grasslands in the middle of the Kalahari, fed by flood waters flowing from central Angola. The wildlife on the bordering plains and many islands exist in staggering proportions. Jao is a luxury camp, an architectural marvel with tented spaces you’d kill to have as a condo in Manhattan. It’s also a bird-lover’s paradise. Stepping out of your tent, you’re likely to spot a rare Pel’s fishing owl. Endangered Wattled Cranes are everywhere, as are Kori Bustards – guides love to yell, “Big Bustard!” when these massive, magnificent birds appear.

As with many of the other camps, there also is an altruistic element to this resort. Jao Camp’s owners have nearby camps that devote part of a season to underprivileged kids – including AIDS orphans and street children – to acquaint them with neglected aspects of their heritage and environment.

MOMBO CAMP, BOTSWANA, OKAVANGO DELTA: This high-luxury outpost – the crown prince of Saudi Arabia once took it over for a week and customized it for his family – is located in the Moremi Game Reserve on Chief’s Island. The largest island in the delta, it provides a captive cast of wildlife that provides perhaps the best viewing in southern Africa. A preferred locale for wildlife documentaries, the area has seen the recent re-introduction of rhinos, which had been poached out of Botswana. Predators abound, including a couple dozen leopards near camp, and one of the largest populations of endangered wild dogs. Sometimes it seems you can’t throw a rock without hitting a lion – so be careful when you throw those rocks.

ISANDLWANA LODGE, SOUTH AFRICA, KWAZULU NATAL: Far to the east of the rift, several hours north of Durban, you’ll find a mecca for military battle buffs. Isandlwana Lodge is built into cliffs overlooking the famed site of the gripping 1879 Anglo-Zulu battle. This was the British equivalent of Custer’s Last Stand, with an entire division being wiped out. Before you go, see Michael Caine’s first movie, Zulu, which was filmed there. Then, attend the battlefield lectures that give moment-to-moment histories of the event, making your hair stand on end. This region also provides great access to huge national and private game reserves, and to Sodwana Bay, which, in addition to being the top dive site in South Africa, is also home to swirling frenzies of hammerhead sharks.

AUDI CAMP, MAUN, BOTSWANA: While considerably less elegant than the other locales discussed here, Maun is a staging and take-off point for the far reaches of Botswana. Though it has some fancy tents, Audi Camp mostly consists of humbler, inexpensive digs. Kick back in the pool and bar, which collects an eclectic cast of characters, including bush pilots (watch your girl around them; they’re near the top of the predator line), blowhard camp owners (the local sheiks), recovering Peace Corps volunteers, Steve Irwin wanna-bes who make guides cringe, and guides who can tell great stories of stupid client tricks and partly faked wildlife documentaries. Some locals who worked on The Amazing Racecan be compelled to discuss the real contest, which apparently consisted of a legion of TV-industry sycophants backbiting their way up the show’s hierarchy.

CAPE TOWN: This city is a knockout beauty. Try paragliding from Lions Head mountain, which rookies can do in tandem via Parapax, run by professional clown and hypnotist Stef Juncker. Top-ranked leisure hotel Cape Grace sets African standards for elegance, with offerings that include the best-stocked Scotch bar on the continent. The Metropole Hotel is in the middle of what’s happening downtown,such as a grand array of nightlife and museums. Don’t miss a safari in wine country – Wilderness has affiliate tours – in search of a wild and free-roaming port.