Twelve days split between Cape Town, Kruger and Madikwe is the sort of trip that resets you, and it begins in the city with the mountain in its front yard. The cable car to the top of Table Mountain runs on a private basis, so you're at the summit with a glass in hand by mid-morning. No shuffling forward in a queue that snakes back to the lower station. We rode up at nine, and the cloud sat below the table's edge, with the whole city laid out underneath us. Breakfast was set on a white cloth at the top: pastries, fruit, coffee that kept coming. Nothing about the morning felt rushed. From there the Winelands, where the estates are old and the cellars cool. A tasting at one of the historic chateaus can be arranged around your own table rather than a shared counter. The drive between farms takes about forty minutes if your driver knows the back road past the pass, and ours did. Ask for a pour of the Chenin from the block behind the manor house; it's the one the winemaker keeps for family. The pour is small. The flavour lasts. Then the safari, which is what everyone comes for in the end. In Kruger the Land Cruiser is open-sided, the ranger has been tracking the same lion pride for six years, and the radio chatter between vehicles is quiet enough that you hear the bush instead. Our guide, Sipho, cut the engine twice in one afternoon just to listen. Elephants crossed the track in front of us on the second stop, three of them, the smallest walking between the others. The lodge itself is the kind of place where the infinity pool ends and the watering hole begins, and nobody minds if you spend the whole afternoon between the two. Dinner is served under a thatched roof, three courses, and the chef will tell you which farm the lamb came from if you ask. Madikwe is quieter in every way, fewer vehicles on the roads, and it's entirely possible to have a game drive to yourself with no one for company but your guide and whatever the morning offers. Leopards there seem to know the schedule better than the rangers do. On our last drive we found one in a leadwood tree at dusk, and we sat with the engine off for twenty minutes before anyone said a word. I had my doubts about the whole business, if I'm being straight with you. Comfort and the bush don't always sit easily together, and I wasn't sure I'd want a butler on a safari. I was wrong. The staff at the second lodge remembered how I take my coffee by the second morning. The sheets were the softest I've slept on in years, and yes, I did sleep through a rhino sighting once. Sipho forgave me. The good camps let you drift all the way down, and that is worth the time it takes to get there. The flight home leaves in the early evening, so there's a last morning at the pool with nothing to do but watch the water. My boots still have red dust in the seams. I haven't cleaned them.