Part of the reason is a tradition of expert trackers. The other part is habituated leopards. Not tame, mind you, but calm in the presence of Range Rovers.

Jeremiah Hambana sits in the jump seat of Angus's Range Rover. He's a soft-spoken Shangana whose native tongue is Tsonga. A golden- beaded belt offers a glint of local color to his khaki uniform. His job: to interpret the subtle language of the bush, using tracks, sounds, smells. At 45 years old, he has worked at Londolozi the last four years in the enviable position of tracker, 19 years in all doing various other jobs. He aspires to be a ranger-guide, vowing to bone up on his English.

Jeremiah makes spotting leopards look simple. So much so, in fact, that I catch Angus telling another guide that we "bumped into" a female cub on our drive back to camp. Hardly.

It was dark except for the light from the moon and, finally, the Southern Cross. Jeremiah was manning the spotlight. He noticed an unusual "branch" in a thicket of trees that escaped all the rest of our eyes: it was white-tipped and spotted. Unflinching, however. So not to disturb her, Jeremiah placed a filter over the bright light, bathing her gorgeous patterned fur in soft pink. She never moved.

We just had been following this cub's brother, which had been on the prowl and vocalizing for its mother — a parent who seemed more interested in putting distance between herself and her cubs than tending to their needs. (It's just about time for them to begin fending for themselves and establish their own territories, Angus explains.)

Fully sated now by our exciting sightings, we bump and roll back to camp along a network of well-worn dirt roads.

"Ecotourism creates jobs and keeps the environment relatively intact," Angus says, "but it does have an impact."

The real challenge, he adds, is for Londolozi to make enough money off of people wanting to see elephants and lions to enable it to purchase greater tracts of land that will serve to protect species less charismatic, but not less important, than the "Big Five."

Next, I'm heading west to the grasslands of the Free State, site of John Varty's tiger sanctuary project. None of Africa's "Big Five" reside there. But two very important tigers do.

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