On a luxury safari in a private game reserve, Robert Upe creeps up on rhinos and watches lions hunting.

Danger is all around. I have left Johannesburg, where eight people have been killed in an overnight car chase with police, where angry mobs are beating up immigrant workers and where the Star newspaper reports South Africa's murder tally has dropped to 18,487 killings for the year.

I'm now in grassland at Phinda Private Game Reserve stalking a hot-tempered white rhinoceros. Our small group is trying to get close enough to see the nostrils twitching on one Africa's most aggressive animals.

As we edge closer, our guide orders us to get lower and quieter until we're bellying through the dry grass like black mamba snakes. As I do this, I hope a real black mamba doesn't slither into my line of sight.

The black mamba (so called because its mouth is black rather than its skin colour, which is olive) is one of the fastest snakes in the world, capable of 20kmh - a Ferrari of slithering compared with my movement, which is more like a green-grocer's van overladen with potatoes.

There are wondrous stories about black mambas, best told around African campfires at night - mostly untrue, I figure, but bound to scare children. Stories involving mambas chasing people for kilometres, sliding into houses to kill every occupant and getting up on their tails and biting people on the forehead.

I've had a debate at our safari camp with an opinionated woman about the mamba's toxicity. She says it is the most poisonous in the world, but I say it's Australia's taipan.

But back to the rhinoceros.

We're within a hundred metres or so and it is standing there clueless that people are slithering; nevertheless we are in a savanna and I note there are no trees to climb if we are flushed out.

"If I tell you to get up a tree, get up the tree. Don't stand around asking which one, just do it," our guide said on a previous outing. He never said what to do if there are no trees but a rhinoceros can run at 50kmh over short distances or cover 30 metres in 2.7 seconds so a sprint is best avoided unless you have starting blocks, spikes and your name is Usain Bolt.

The two-tonne rhinoceros is grazing and it looks like a dim-witted but likeable brute. I admire its power and note its square lip, which is a hallmark of the white rhino. (The rarer and more ill-tempered black rhino has a hooked lip).

The zebra and antelope around the rhinoceros have twigged to our presence and they have become fidgety. Will they somehow tip off the rhinoceros?

Our guide beckons with pre-arranged hand signals (no talking allowed, although we naughtily break into whispers sometimes) to back out of the area towards the safety of our Land Rover. The guide is a good man to have between you and a rhinoceros. He carries a .375 magnum rifle (in my mind, an "elephant gun").

To find animals, we also have a Zulu tracker who closely examines dung, broken twigs and footprints like a professor in a laboratory.

No gun for him; he carries only a piece of wood that looks a little like a caveman's club. It's called an induku and the idea isn't to whack the rhinoceros on the head but to throw the heavy club into the bush as a decoy. Rhinos' eyesight is poor and they will turn towards a sound rather than rely on their vision to hit their target.

Back at the Land Rover, it's my favourite time on safari. Sunset drinks known as "sundowners" are a daily routine on CC Africa safaris. The company, which changed its name this week to & Beyond, realises a hot-chocolate shooter with Amarula or a gin and tonic in the savannah can be as rewarding as seeing a lion in the bush.

I sip on my G and T and chew on South Africa's favourite cured salty meat, biltong (like beef jerky), while the sunset throws hues of yellow and orange across the grassy plains.

Rhinoceros, zebra and antelope graze in the distance and we hear drums from a village in an archetypical African scene.

The rhinoceros is among Africa's "big five" animals, alongside the elephant, lion, leopard and buffalo, so called because they are the hardest to hunt on foot. These days the phrase is widely used as a marketing term that causes most safari guides to raise their eyebrows because they know there is so much more to see.

White rhinos were hunted to the brink of extinction last century for their horns, which are used in traditional Asian medicine. A book about the history of the Phinda game reserve, The Return by Shan Varty and Molly Buchanan, says there were only 20 white rhinos in the world in 1920.

The numbers are now up to 14,500 on most estimates and the white rhino is the least-endangered of the five species of rhino in Africa and Asia. But the World Wildlife Fund warns that demand for their horns is still high.

CC Africa is a travel safari company that has spearheaded many conservation efforts, including the rehabilitation of the 150-square kilometre Phinda reserve, which had become a series of derelict farms with most animals hunted out.

The company's program to repair the habitat, reintroduce animals and connect surrounding communities with the land started a decade ago and appears to be working as far as can be gauged from a one-week visit and multiple awards for conservation and ecotourism. There are now 100 white rhino and 27 black rhino at Phinda, enough to allow white rhinos to be sold to other game reserves to help distribution.

People from the local communities help with ongoing conservation at the reserve or as staff at CC Africa's lodges and bush camps.

Community tours are encouraged and visitors are greeted with wide smiles. We see people rolling barrels of water from wells to their homes. We peep inside a hot computer training room where young adults are being trained on outdated equipment that may one day give them the skills to work in Johannesburg.

We also call in at an office dedicated to AIDS education and visit a medical centre that is confronting to us in its simplicity but a major advance on previous facilities.

The big smile of Tembi, who lives at a nearby community, greets us when we return to our tented bush camp in darkness after our rhinoceros outing. Tembi is always there to greet us, serving her brew of iced tea at lunch (everyone asks for the recipe), handing out warm towels to wipe away the dust when we return from outings or making sure the candles that line the dirt path at night stay alight for our return.

Camping has never been so good. The tents have floors with matting, beds have soft mattresses, there's an antique chest of drawers and a bathroom with a flush toilet and bush shower that is topped up daily with water.

I am zipped in every night by camp staff and woken each morning by the camp joker, who makes realistic lion or baboon noises outside the canvas.

A big fire, surrounded by comfortable chairs, blazes each night as people tell their black mamba stories and devour game meats and bush dinners of South Africa's favourite sausage boerewors and roast rib beef with cumin. It seems South Africans like a barbecue as much as Australians.

Walking alone on the bush tracks between the tents at night is forbidden, lest there be an unexpected encounter with an animal such as a lion.

The advice over and over on safari is not to run from an animal and appear like prey. Many guides say they have unexpectedly come face to face with lions and have been able to successfully withdraw from life-or-death situations by calmly backing off. "The worst thing you can do is turn and run," one guide says.

He tells of an occasion when he accidentally stumbled across three lions eating a kill. Two lions jumped from the kill and flanked him while the third confronted him head on. As the guide stepped back the lions would step forward but he made it to his vehicle and it's one of the most ripping yarns I hear on safari.

The camp is the domain of people undertaking "walking" safaris but for more conventional safari outings in big four-wheel-drives, the main accommodation choices at Phinda are Forest Lodge and Mountain Lodge.

Both are exceptional in their quality and service and thrive on alfresco dining in bomas, outdoor enclosures surrounded by rock walls or thatched fencing to keep animals out. The bomas are ablaze with lanterns and candles and open fires and tables are scattered throughout. More than once we are treated to African dancing and singing during dinner.

Suites are decorated in earthy tones and include slate floors, wood carvings, open fires, vaulted ceilings with fans and outdoor wooden decks with plunge pools and views across the plains.

The routine on safari is to stay with the same guide on each drive. There are usually two outings a day: the first at sunrise, the second in late afternoon. The Phinda vehicles do not have doors or roofs and it is possible to creep close to animals.

We have lions walk within 10 metres, a cheetah ambles by so close that I can't frame it in my camera viewfinder and we can almost feel the breeze from a testy elephant as it flaps its ears while its young cross the road nearby.

Somehow the vehicle seems to make us invisible to the animals and we follow a lioness and her cubs on a hunt, come across leopards eating an antelope and stop near hippos and crocodiles at a waterhole.

In the morning and late at night it becomes so cold that blankets are compulsory and hot water bottles are standard-issue. As the sun comes up, so does the heat and by the end of our morning drives we are down to T-shirts and shorts.

The middle of the day is for lunch, resting and souvenir shopping. I'm at Mountain Lodge, where I buy a T-shirt that has become one of my favourites. The front of it lists collective nouns: a crash of rhinoceroses, a journey of giraffes, a pride of lions, a herd of elephants, a clan of hyena, a dazzle of zebra, a leap of leopards and a parliament of owls. I've seen them all and more but not a black mamba.

Robert Upe travelled courtesy of CC Africa.

FAST FACTS

Getting there

Qantas flies from Melbourne and Sydney to Perth, then connects with South African Airways to Johannesburg; fares from $1525, excluding tax. Johannesburg to Durban with South African Airways is $352 including taxes.

Staying there

Phinda Game Reserve's walking safaris are from $210 a person a night, including armed guide, tracker, meals, drinks and accommodation in luxury tents. Forest and mountain lodges are from $370 a person a night, including driving safaris with guide and tracker, meals, drinks and accommodation. See ccafrica.com or andbeyond.com.

Reading

Whatever You Do, Don't Run by Peter Allison, the adventures of a Botswana safari guide. On Safari in Africa by Patrick Brakspear, 101 things to know when you go on safari.