The staff are friendly and all know your name but not in a gushy “Hi, I'm Victoria and I’ll be your host today” kind of way. It is informal and relaxing.

The days quickly fell into a nice routine. A 5.30am wake-up call and a small breakfast before setting out on the deceptively comfortable jeep at about 6.10am to explore the 24,000 acres.

After an hour or so we would stop in a clearing and out would come the tea, hot chocolate, coffee and cakes. Then after another hour and a half back to the lodge for a proper breakfast.

The rest of the day was spent by the plunge pool or the main, bigger pool, with lunch in the main room overlooking the park.

Africa's boundary-breaking safari park

Stanley Johnson explores Peace Park - a vast park where wildlife will roam unchecked across three frontiers

Aaronovitch on a family safari of Zambia

In the company of lions, elephants, hippos, hyenas and countless exotic birds, David Aaronovitch and family get in tune with nature

• 10 classic wildlife tales

• The world’s top safaris

• Zambia in the wet season

BACKGROUND

• Nobody to watch wildebeest migration in Kenya

• Ask our expert: a four-week safari

• Work in a safari camp = cheap holiday

• A horseback safari in Kenya

Related Links

• Aaronovitch on a family safari of Zambia

At 4pm the afternoon drive would begin. As the sun began to set Abbie and I, a couple from Paris and a couple from London, plus Johan and Anios would stop and out came the mini-bar.

Champagne and chocolates (coke for Abbie) as the sun went down. Then a night safari and back to the lodge just in time for a wash before dinner.

The first day we saw a pride of lions complete with cubs. Johan stopped about 6ft from them and turned the engine off for is to watch them clean and play with each other as they relaxed after a big kill.

A 24-month-old leopard came right up to the Jeep and stopped inches away allowing us plenty of time to take some amazing pictures and video. It is easy to forget that these cute and cuddly-looking predators could kill.

The only scary moment, apart from the rhino close encounter, was when a pregnant female elephant came up to the Jeep for a closer look.

Johan had warned us she might. From twenty feet away she didn't look that big but from five feet it was a different matter and I found myself inching back in the seat as she approached. She stopped to inspect us and was so close that we could see the baby inside her kicking.

Just across the track four hundred buffalo walked past, just like in the nature programmes, wallowing in a small watering hole as they went. They were lined up in the bush as far as you could see waiting to come past. Really amazing.

Eight zebra (they mingle together so their stripes confuse predators, not allowing them to focus on any single zebra) grazed happily near some impala (common antelope), hippo, crocodile, kudu (type of antelope), wild dogs, mongoose, giraffe (which can drink for only 29 seconds before having to stand) and water buffalo, all seen up close and personal.

The first night the staff told us how just the week before they had to close off some areas of the lodge as one of the leopards had come up for a snooze.

As we were escorted back to our room the guard put out his hand, indicating that we should stop, and looked left and right. “Anything wrong?” I asked.

“The leopard just came by here.” We quick-marched the twenty yards back to our room without incident.

The only security advice we were given was to make sure we locked the patio doors when we left the room as the baboons have learned to open them, open the cupboard and empty the mini bar of tea, coffee and sugar.

We had flown in to Johannesburg airport and it was a swift hour-and-a-half to Ulusaba by road for an amazing experience and best of all we escaped unharmed. Not even an insect bite.

Back at Jo’burg airport the sign above the door read: “Enter here at your own risk”.

We ran straight to check in.

FACT BOX

Virgin Holidays offers four nights at Ulusaba Private Game Reserve in South Africa from £3,664 per adult and £2,616 for children.

Includes return international flights with Virgin Atlantic from Heathrow direct to Johannesburg, return air transfers and accommodation on an all inclusive basis at the Rock Lodge.

Prices may be subject to a fuel surcharge and an increase in Air Passenger Duty, prices are also based on two adults sharing Call 0844 5573 861 or visit www.virginlimitededition.com

Times recommends

• Overlanding then and now
• Live Q&A: ski fitness and injury
• Get the right payment card and deny Ryanair its hefty fee