Revel in the splendours of the animal kingdom while helping it to flourish

TIM McGUIRE

IN the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in central Kenya, the last male northern white rhino lives under armed guard. His horn is made from keratin, the same material as toenails, but the belief it has aphrodisiac qualities means it’s worth more than gold. In 2007, South Africa lost just 13 rhinos to poachers. In 2014, they lost 1,215: that’s one every nine hours. About 38,000 elephants are also killed for their ivory every year, so what between an epidemic of poaching on one hand and competition for habitat with the human population on the other, African wildlife is in greater danger of extinction than ever before.

One way you can preserve it is by donating to wildlife charities. Another is by going on safari with ethical operators who invest in their communities and conservation. The South African government calculates that every tourist supports 10 local people, and as their economy is in even worse shape than ours, every dollar makes a real difference and you can go there with a clean conscience.

You can go on safari all over South Africa, and it’s not all about the Big Five (lion, elephant, Cape buffalo, leopard and rhino). Grootbos private nature reserve in the Western Cape offers flower safaris where you can track down charismatic major flora. Grootbos sits at the heart of the world’s smallest “floral kingdom”, which contains more species than the entire Amazon rainforest.

The Afrikaans word for the terrain is “fynbos” which at first glance looks like a grouse moor, but where there are only four heathers in Scotland, the fynbos has more than 600, along with the king proteas that are South Africa’s national flower. The elegant lodge sits at the heart of a forest of ancient milkwood trees, festooned with trailing wisps of lichen. As befits an enchanted forest, there are also poison apples, but in the place of Snow White’s lonely tower, Grootbos has 16 suites with sweeping views down to Walker Bay where you can dive with great white sharks all year round, or, between September and December, watch the majestic southern right whales when they arrive after their 2,500-mile journey from Antarctica to calve and mate.

Grootbos invests in its community through the Green Futures Initiative, where local teenagers are trained as gardeners, and every year three of them are sent on sabbatical to the Eden Project in Cornwall. They’ve also somehow persuaded Fifa to sponsor a floodlit, all-weather football pitch where the kids can develop their sporting potential too: Grootbos is a beautiful place, with a lot of soul.