A week of safari can be lavish to the point of absurdity. The only decision that matters most afternoons is whether the gin and tonic gets ice cubes or a chilled lime wedge, and a lion is often dozing somewhere past the deck. We start in Cape Town, three nights, with a transfer in a car whose leather still smells new. The hotel does something clever with the view: Table Mountain fills the window before you've found your shoes. Breakfast runs to pastries from a bakery on Bree Street, and I ate two platefuls on the first morning, then sat by the Frette linen wondering why anyone would leave the room at all. The staff bring a second pot of coffee without being asked, and the balcony off room 412 catches the mountain in full sun until nearly ten. Then the city gives way to the Winelands, and the days take on a gentler rhythm. A private walk through the Bo Kaap with a guide named Sipho, who grew up four streets from the house where we stopped for coffee. At the top of Table Mountain, reached by cable car, a glass is already in hand. At a boutique estate outside Stellenbosch, a winemaker walked us through a barrel sample of Pinotage that won't be bottled until next year. Cheese arrived on a slate, and a second platter followed before anyone thought to ask. The cellar tour ran long because nobody wanted to leave the cool of the barrel room. Kapama is the part people remember. The villas sprawl, each with a plunge pool that looks straight into the bush, and the neighbours tend to be giraffes. Our ranger, Piet, spotted a leopard in a marula tree at about eighty metres, and it took the rest of us a full minute to find the tail. He's been at Kapama eleven years and still carries the same pair of binoculars he bought in 2013. Game drives leave at half past five, in open 4x4s that hold six guests and no more. One morning a herd of elephants crossed the track a few metres from the bonnet, the smallest walking close enough to its mother that you could count the wrinkles on its trunk. Blankets come out before sunrise, and coffee comes with them. I asked Piet how he does it. He shrugged. Afternoons are yours. A dip in the pool, a massage in a tent that faces the savanna, or a book on a lounger while something rustles in the grass behind you. Evening drives begin around six, and the bush reorganises itself under the moonlight. A lion on the move sounds like nothing until you hear it. The details are what stay with you. Dinners under the stars, a different South African wine poured with each course, and a guide who remembers you take your coffee black. I still don't know how the kitchen produced a lemon tart that good from a camp oven. The chef wouldn't give up the recipe, only the name of the farm where the lemons come from. Leaving is strange. Cape Town and Kapama together make a week that feels longer and shorter than seven days at once, and the return to ordinary evenings takes some adjusting. The last morning, a francolin walked across the lawn while we waited for the transfer, and nobody said much of anything.