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‘'Occasionally hyenas and baboons raid the laundry yard.’ The ‘fact to note’ on the laundry list in Mountain Lodge - a private game reserve in South Africa - makes me laugh out loud. I never did discover how many bras and pairs of knickers have been abducted, strewn over thorn bushes or buried in wart-hog holes on the 17,000 hectares of restored wildlife park in Phinda, KwaZulu Natal. In Zulu, ‘Phinda’ means return to the wild. Animals, including cheetahs, lions and leopards, are free to wander - there is no delineation between the bush and the grounds of the lodge - although during my five-day stay, the only beast I saw from the ‘private deck’ of my deliciously stylish bamboo-thatched bedroom was a vervet monkey, swinging in a wild date palm and sucking on a stolen banana.

But no one is taking any chances. The evening I check in at Mountain Lodge I am quietly thrilled to be instructed not to walk anywhere after dark without being escorted by a security guard. ‘So that rules out corridor creeping,’ I joke flippantly to the Guest Relations Manager, who laughs obligingly. During lunch the following afternoon in the north of the reserve at Forest Lodge, where the bedroom huts are built of glass, I hear the shocking talk of a woman who was dining in the ‘boma’ (outdoor enclosure) and slipped out, without telling anyone, to fetch some shoes. When she failed to return, her husband went to look for her, but it was too late; his wife had just been killed by a lioness.

My lunch companion is an ex-ranger, Graham, and although he assures me the incident is isolated, I am aware of the rifle resting against his chair. We are eating line fish looking out at the Ubombo Mountains, while in the foreground some orange flowering aloes, looking remarkably like elongated pineapples, swing in the soft breeze. Graham is in charge of training recruits at the Inkwasi Camp. This was where I had spent my first night in South Africa, more out of a fevered curiosity to experience some real bush life, away from the luxurious lodges and pampered game drives, than a desire to train as one myself.

The night I stayed at Inkwasi it was rainy and unexpectedly cold. A woman at Johannesburg Airport had told me that rangers are the most gorgeous animals in the bush and when Graham collected me from the airstrip I was not disappointed. I was looking forward to a hot bath, having travelled for over 20 hours from London on three flights, the last in a flimsy four-seater plane. I had been warned that conditions at Inkwasi were basic: cold showers, no electricity, no telephone. I cursed the cold trek to the bathroom as, with the first whiff of wind, my paraffin lamp blew out.

When I stumbled into a bamboo hut for supper, the trainees, including two young black men and a white woman, scraped back their seats and rose to greet me. Throughout our supper of sausages and chips no one smoked or drank, and I was treated like a visiting dignitary, with recruits asking me polite questions about where I lived and what I was doing. Later, Graham informed me that a ranger is permitted to smoke only when all his ‘guests’ have lit up and even then, only if a cigarette is offered. Rangers will never drink alcohol on duty, but they will be on hand to serve up cocktails and cheese straws on the early evening game drives.

I have a fitful night’s sleep, in damp clothes, woken every few hours with the tent flap slapping my face. The recruits appear unbothered by the discomfort of ranger life. Only about one per cent of all applicants who apply to become a ranger get as far as this six-week course, and the ones I spoke to have never wanted to do anything else. I ask Graham what qualities make a good ranger: ‘Enthusiasm and empathy are more important than skills. They must be able to communicate, and should have one outstanding characteristic. They should be diligent or funny, whatever, not too individualist, and tolerant, although passion for the bush covers a multitude of sins.’

The next day, longed-for sun shines through cloud. It is winter season but quite warm. I had imagined that the recruits would spend the day crawling along the bush on their stomachs, wielding rifles and practising how to suck serpent stings out of each other’s bodies, but today they will visit schools, clinics and a flourishing charcoal business that have been set up on the ‘Resource Reserve.’ They will be lectured on organiser Conservation Corporation Africa’s policy on equality, which adheres to the Zulu code, whereby hierarchy depends on age, not colour.

‘It was a radical policy when it was instigated,’ says Graham, ‘because it was established quite a few years before political change.’

We opt for an impromptu game drive with Graham in an open-top Land Rover. He draws my attention to an emerald-spotted dove and some cheetah tracks - distinguishable from those of a leopard because a cheetah has a front claw which is not completely retractable, and so leaves a mark. Minutes later my heart rushes when we discover three cheetahs sitting on a termite hill.

‘A coalition of three males,’ says Graham. He drives slowly towards them at an angle. ‘We don’t drive straight on as it is too challenging. And we never have more than three vehicles near an animal. The animals should not be disturbed in any way. If a guest has the wrong kind of camera to take a shot from a distance, that’s his problem.’

As I am the kind of person who feels guilty for squashing an ant, I am delighted to hear this news.

The cheetah brothers perform for us: yawning, stretching, lying down and standing up, licking each other. They move gracefully like a Greek chorus, simultaneously changing their gaze so each is always looking in a different direction. We are near enough to stare into their amber-coloured eyes but not close enough to be threatening. We sit transfixed by these beautiful animals and I curse for forgetting my camera.

In the late afternoon we meet up by a ‘pan’ (pond) with Graham and the recruits.

‘What bird is that?’ Graham asks, pointing at a small brown speck hopping around on a branch in the far distance. All eyes look through binoculars and then down to their bird books, while I swivel my head to see if I can see the legendary crocodile.

‘Some guests are fanatical about birds,’ says Graham, ‘including the tiny, brown nondescript ones, while others are only interested in big game.

‘You can’t take this long. Your guests will get bored,’ Graham sighs.

‘Purple-crested lourie?’ Sam suggests.

‘Sam, you guess all the time,’ Graham replies. ‘Never guess. You will be admired as a ranger, but don’t let your ego blow out of your own body. If you don’t know, admit it.’

‘What happens if it’s your first drive and someone asks you how long you’ve been doing this?’ Chris asks.

Graham sighs again. ‘You hope,’ he says, ‘that they don’t.’

We are driving by a fever-tree forest just before the sun sets. While the landscape is becoming hazy, the delicate white trees glow. The fever tree is so called because early travellers often contracted malaria, while camping near them. Later it was discovered that it was not the trees that caused the malaria but a mosquito that liked the same damp conditions. However, the name stuck. Louis, a black recruit, tells us the Zulu name for the tree, ‘umHlosinga’, with a far more romantic meaning - The Tree That Shines From Afar.

‘When a local man or woman is going for an interview and wants to shine out,’ he explains, ‘they take some bark, dry it, then crush it into powder and bathe in it.’

Luxuriating at Mountain Lodge, I plunge myself into my own huge bath and enjoy it enormously. Afterwards, at an exquisite buffet dinner in the boma, I meet Tina, who will act as my ranger. Tina is 34, and has already passed the Inkwasi course, but she has not yet done her final assessment drive or gone alone on foot into the bush, or shot an impala and carried it back home - a ritual that must be carried out by all recruits before officially becoming a ranger. ‘I’ve never had a problem being a woman among all these male rangers,’ she confides, ‘but a couple of times I’ve had trouble with macho male guests who don’t think I’m up to it.’

Early to bed because I will be up at 4:45am to track the endangered black rhino on foot in the neighbouring Mkeze reserve. Tina, Tod - the head ranger - and an armed tracker will accompany me.

‘There is a 50 per cent chance of seeing the rhino,’ Tina laughs, ‘and a 50 per cent chance of ending up in a tree.’

At 6:15 we are walking in silent single file in the soft early morning light. Mkeze has few roads, and consequently feels wilder than Phinda. We see a male impala grazing in whispering grass and Tod points out that the reason he’s not looking up every few seconds is because there are no predators on this reserve. We hear a zebra snorting a warning call and then come upon a couple of curious giraffes in a fever-tree forest which, in this diffused light, is like a Garden of Eden.

A few paces ahead, our tracker is making signs to Tod like a bookie at the races. We have been following him for about an hour and a half, discovering clues of early morning tracks and recent dung middens. We have now reached the danger zone - dense thicket. Tod whispers intensely that we must keep close as the rhino has a reputation for being pugnacious. My heart is thumping and I’m genuinely scared (but not as scared as when, a few days later, I’m cowering behind a thorn bush a few meters from a white rhino which is moving towards us and has to be frightened off with a loud ‘Whoop’). Meantime, the tracker has found recent tracks of a male black rhino, but he’s circling confusingly in his quest to hunt down a female in oestrus. The wind is also changing direction. Rhinos have weak sight but a particularly good sense of smell, which means he will now pick up our scent, so there is no hope of finding him.

Over coffee and biscuits the tracker tells me that if a black rhino decides to charge, it is not wise to follow your instincts and climb a tree. The scented thorn trees are too squat to climb up and climbing any other tree wouldn’t be practical. The solution, he tells us, is either to lie flat and hope he doesn’t trample you, or run dizzily round and round the trunk.

The following afternoon, continuing in the adventurous spirit, I opt for a canoe safari. Tina is taking me down the Mzinene river. She didn’t tell me that there would be another guest joining us - a big bellied New Zealander, resident in Johannesburg. Once I get the hang of canoeing, it’s fun, even though Mr. NZ manages to belt me over the head with his paddle. We float past countless hanging weaver nest, through a glade of palm leaves and on to where a giant fever tree is reflected in the water. Lions are so boring,’ Mr NZ proclaims loudly, rippling the peace, ‘they’re always asleep. I prefer action animals. I want to see a cheetah running by the side of the jeep like they do in those TV advertisements.’

On my last evening, sitting by the fire, I am really sad to leave this Utopian place where the chef climbs a tree to announce the menu; where you can see a lioness and cubs in the morning, and go for a bush walk in the afternoon, learning Zulu folklore along the way; where the black and white population treat each other and the animals with respect.

A ranger sits down beside me and asks how I am. I describe my canoe trip.

‘What’s your idea of a guest from hell?’ I ask.

‘Let’s say you are looking at a lion gorging on a zebra,’ he replies, ‘You get the guests who ask, “Who killed the zebra?”. That can be tiring.’

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