♪ ♪ (Rudy Maxa) I'm chasing big game through the rugged bush, on safari in wild, heart-stopping South Africa.

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[people sing in their native language] ♪ ♪ It's just before dawn and we're out tracking game at Kwandwe.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (man) What'cha got?

(2nd man) There's some lion tracks here.

(1st man) Lion tracks.

We got lion tracks.

But fresh.

That's a good sign.

Nice.

Okay.

♪ ♪ Now, there's the kill there next to that bush.

I can't see what it is from here.

It looks like the lions are done with it, but we're just gonna go a little bit closer and see if we can have a look.

There you go, you can see a couple horns there.

Long, very long horns.

Very long, yeah.

It looks like an oryx.

The lions look like they've moved off, and they're probably in the area, but they're not lying around here, so I'm just gointo jump off quick and have a look.

So it doesn't smell that bad yet, which is telling me that it's not that old.

And you can see the horns yet.

They're still quite heavy.

It looks like it's fresh enough for these animals to be quite close by, so let's go and have a look around the area and see if we get lucky.

♪ ♪ Look, look, right there.

We've been looking for lions all morning, and our guide just found a fresh carcass and nearby, a pride of lions sleeping off their meal.

♪ ♪ (Grant) That's a lion's life.

They'll sleep on average between 20 and 22 hours every day.

(Rudy) Why so much sleeping?

(Grant) I think it's got a lot to do with their diet.

They've almost got a diet of pure protein.

So with all the meat that they're eating, it takes a lot of energy to digest it, so they've got to sleep it off.

♪ ♪ (Rudy) Wildlife safaris are making a comeback in South Africa.

Just miles from the stunning coastline lie wildlife preserves, where indigenous animals have been reintroduced to their former habitat on reclaimed farmland.

The result, a triumph for man and for wild animals, a place where local people find new opportunities, and visitors can experience the thrill of a lifetime, and it's all the more appealing because the Eastern Cape reserves are malaria-free.

Kwandwe Private Game Reserve is in the Great Fish River Valley on the Eastern Cape, just north of the famous Garden Route in South Africa.

The drill is simple.

Grant, my ranger, and Dali, our animal tracker, load me into the land cruiser and off we go every morning and evening looking for wildlife.

[people sing in their native language] ♪ ♪ (Rudy) Over the hill for cheetahs today, maybe.

(Grant) Yeah, the area, like Dali was saying, this is where they were seen more recently as well.

(Rudy) You're saying plural.

Do they travel together?

(Grant) Yeah.

♪ ♪ (Rudy) Beautiful.

(Grant) Yeah.

Do you know the relationship, Grant, between these 5 cheetahs?

Yeah, it's a mother and her 4 youngsters.

They still got quite a lot of long fur on the back of their necks.

That shows that they're quite young They're busy learning how to hunt at the moment, at this stage in their lives, so they'll follow around while she hunts, of the hunting for them.still dt That's actually something quite special to see, 5 cheetahs all together.

They're highly likely to be killed when they're quite young.

They're very vulnerable, and the mother's not very powerful to protect them.

Cheetahs have sacrificed all their weight and their strength for speed.

I mean, these guys are the fastest land mammals on earth.

How fast can an adult cheetah run?

Well, top speed for a cheetah, the maximum, reliably recorded speed, is 112 kilometers an hour.

Wow!

That's about 85 miles an hour.

Are these reserves important simply to keep cetahs alive in the world?r.

Absolutely, yeah.

One of the reasons why the population of cheetahs is reduced so much was because of encroaching human populations.

So the more of these reserves we've got and the more of them that we can join together, the bigger these areas become, and the more space the cheetahs have got to run around in again.

Everywhere you'll see fences being dropped and agreements being signed to remove boundaries and open up land again.

So it's very good news.

[acoustic guitar plays softly] (Rudy) Over the centuries, European settlers cleared many of the animals from this land.

Today, their former farmland is being turned into game reserves and restocked with indigenous wildlife.

The success is astounding.

The number of white rhinos, for example, had decreased to fewer than 50 around 100 years ago.

Now they number more than 7000.

The secret?

Finding ways to preserve animals, finance local communities and make enough money to sustain this model through high-end ecotourism.

It's a model Kwandwe and it's parent company called &Beyond have employed all over Africa.

Angus, what is the history of Kwandwe and this land it's on?

Well, to take you way back, this was essentially one of the finest wildlife areas in Africa.

The Great Fish River Valley was very well-known for huge numbers of animals, you know, herds of elephants of up to 3000 strong.

This is the area that the Cape lion walked in.

Then slowly the land changed with more and more settlement, and people tried to farm here.

So picture the landscape with fences, gates, paddocks, windmills, and all other sorts of things.

So when we came here, we had to take all of that down.

So it's been a fantastic experience, really, reclaiming the land back to something like what it was 200 years ago.

[singing in their native language] ♪ ♪ (Rudy) The accommodations on these safaris tend to be luxurious, the idea being to attract travelers looking for adventure, and then funnel jobs and money back into the community.

Great Fish River Lodge is one of the 4 luxury lodges on Kwandwe.

The staff choir simply knocked my socks off.

♪ ♪ En route to spot the big 5, we catch glimpses of all kinds of wildlife, from comical warthogs to spiral-horned kudu to eland, large antelopes with swaying neck dewlaps.

One afternoon, we had a rare sighting of a brown hyena, another endangered animal making a comeback here.

I think that you'll notice when you're here that the animals react very naturally around the vehicle.

You'll see them going about their natural behavior, and that's actually what's important and often what the guests enjoy the most.

(Rudy) Why are animals so natural around vehicles?

(Angus) I haven't been inside the head of an animal yet, but this is how I think it works, is that they don't see the human beings inside the vehicle.

They just see the vehicle.

That's why we don't change the shape of the vehicle.

They get used to it.

You're almost like this neutral creature cruising around, and after a while, they've become so used to you that they'll just carry on with their normal day.

We're going to go and try for this herd of elephants that was nearby, they're up towards the top of those mountains over there, so we're going to make our way up there.

It's going to take a little while, but we should get them.

You had tracks?

There we go, elephant.

Elephant tracks.

This is food, and you can see little scuff mark just over here.

I'll come and have a look on that side of the road as well.

You see they've dropped this as they've been walking past.

They've all come along this little path, crossed the road... You can tell they're going in this direction?

Yeah.

Now here's another branch they've dropped along the way.

You can see a lot of scuff marks on the ground over here.

Can you tell if it's a couple, or...?

A herd, yeah.

A herd?

So there's quite a few of them that have walked through here.

We need to be ready to go.

It's a family group, the herds are usually family groups of closely related females and their offspring.

[loud snapping] (Rudy) This guy is very big.

(Grant) Yeah, he is big, he's the biggest, oldest bull that we've got on Kwandwe.

[loud snapping] How much land does Kwandwe embrace here?

It's about 55,000 acres of land.

And how many guests at any one time could be here?

Only 44.

Only 44 guests on 55,000 acres, which is probably one of the lowest guest to land ratios that you can get.

[guitar, bass, & drums play in bright rhythm] ♪ ♪ (Rudy) On our next wildlife junket, we discovered a mother rhino and her baby being doggedly pursued by a male-- of course, "doggedly" is a relative term in the rhino world.

♪ ♪ Doesn't look like this rhino hook-up is gonna happen.

♪ ♪ I saw a couple giraffes poking their heads above the brush here.

They look like dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park" when you see them rising above the... (Grant) Very prehistoric-looking creatures there, especially when their heads are sticking up above the trees like that.

They're gorgeous, they look so regal in their bearing.

(Grant) Yeah, very graceful, the way they move is sort of fluid.

How they walk--left legs and right legs at the same time.

It's quite strange with animals.

They usually do opposite legs.

♪ ♪ At Kwandwe, guests have the opportunity to take ranger-led bush walks-- another chance to feed me to the animals!

Now, a lot of companies don't allow folks to walk around in the bush.

Why does Kwandwe?

Well, within our whole company, we all do it on all our reserves because it offers such a unique perspective of the bush.

It's so different to driving around in a vehicle.

And we do it in the safest way possible.

I mean, we won't go walking in an area where we know that there's been potentially dangerous game over the last few days.

And if we do see any fresh signs of animals like that, then we move out of the area and try and avoid them.

(Rudy) I appreciate that.

[Grant laughs] I do as well.

Okay, here's, here's a big track here.

That's a big foot.

That's a big foot, sir.

That is huge.

This is fresher than the buffalo tracks.

So when an animal walks through here, there must be 100 signals that they're picking up all the time about who's territory this is and who was recently here and what danger that might be to them, or what option it might be for a menu.

(Grant) Yeah, exactly.

I mean, we aren't even aware of all the stuff that's going on here, like smells and signs and things that animals will walk through here, and they'll pick up straightaway.

(Rudy) Like a hundred billboards that we don't see.

(Grant) Exactly, we're just walking straight past them.

It's like they're invisible.

(Rudy) Do you have folks who only come here to look at birds?

Oh yeah, yeah, there's a lot of very, very keen birders out there.

They come here a they'll stay here for 3 days or so, they'll just try and see how many different species of birds that they can get.

(Rudy) Kwandwe means "place of the blue crane" in Xhosa, the local tribal language.

While I never caught a glimpse of the cranes, I did see many striking birds, including a pied-tail wagger, a goshawk, and I fell captive to a serenade by 2 bokmakieries.

[whistling a short, high-pitched call] Some... maybe lion.

Yeah, so the lion's in the area somewhere, which is good news.

[engine rumbles] (Rudy) Dali picked up the tracks of a male lion, and we met up with him on his evening patrol, only to discover he wasn't alone.

(Grant) What lionesses can do as well is come into a false estrous, which will help them bond with a male, but not conceive a litter of cubs, and even though she might not conceive, she's just trying to strengthen that bond between the 2 of them.

The amazing thing about the mating we just saw, is this is the same lioness who was with his rival only the day before.

So clearly, something's going on here.

Is there an advantage to her in having a male lion as a partner?

I mean, is it protection?

(Grant) Exactly.

It's protection, and what he's actually defending is this ground and his lionesses.

And the one thing that's going to keep this lioness here is obviously the knowledge that she's being protected by this male and the availability of food and water, which in this area is quite plentiful.

So he's got a good piece of real estate.

[soft roar] How do they stake off their territory?

How do we know what their territory is?

How does another lion know?

Yeah, roaring, roaring is one way.

He'll roar every morning or every evening, which is basically advertising that he's here.

This is his place.

And then he'll also do territorial patrols, where he'll walk all the way around the boundaries of his territory, and he'll mark.

He'll let on scents all over the place like a house cat does when it walks up against the wall or against your leg and it brushes the side of its face.

It's got glands in the side of its cheeks that it leaves a scent there with as well, so other lions coming through will be able to smell that and know that this territory is occupied.

How has life changed here at Kwandwe over the last say 10 or 15 years?

It's had a huge impact.

This has gone from a farming community to something that's very different.

Of course, employment is the one thing, but the skills that these communities have now acquired through tourism, it's had a huge impact not only economically, but certainly on the development of this community.

[children sing] (woman) I work here as a preschool teacher from 2002 up until this year, 2008.

How many children attend?

We have got 25 kids, different ages, starting from 2 years up to 6 years.

[guitar plays a bouncy beat; woman laughs] ♪ ♪ [children sing] ♪ ♪ (Rudy) Originally, this area was settled by the Koi who herded cattle.

In the 17th century, the Xhosa tribe arrived and dominated.

European farmers arrived not long afterwards.

Nelson Mandela is of Xhosa descent, and the Xhosa speak with a distinctive clicking sound.

When you speak in your native language, you have 3 different clicking sounds you make to express different words, and I understand you have a nursery rhyme that helped you learn that.

Can you do that nursery rhyme for us?

[makes a clicking sound as she sings] Easy for you to say.

[laughs] [children sing in their native language] ♪ ♪ (Rudy) Game reserves like Kwandwe contribute not only to the preservation of wildlife, but to the economic growth of the communities in the area.

♪ ♪ The folks who work here, there are more people employed I understand on these acres now than there were when there were farms here.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think 4-1/2 times more people.

(Rudy) Literacy programs and programs that develop small businesses are elements of a larger plan to empower people and encourage self-reliance.

[steel drums play] ♪ ♪ [people sing in their native language] (Rudy) Dali, what are you looking for when you're tracking?

♪ (Rudy) I had the distinct pleasure of staying at Melton Lodge, where guests dine in grand style.

Thank you very, very much.

Thanks.

The food here at Kwandwe is terrific, and I figure the lions appreciate it if I add a little more mt on my bones.

Small groups can rent out Melton's 4-bedroom lodge entirely for themselves, and that includes the ranger and tracker.

There in addition to first-class lodging on the edge of the bush, a devoted cook and staff tend to your every need.

♪ ♪ The surprise was how wonderfully the staff choir sang.

♪ ♪ Melton's choir and their rivals at River Lodge compete with other choirs on reserves throughout Africa.

My last day at the reserve dawns, and it's surprisingly chilly on this late September morning.

Dali heard a distress cry, and we're tearing along the road to find out what's happened.

I'll just be here alone.

(Grant) Yeah, when you're in the car, your safe.

I'll keep that in mind.

Thanks.

[cacophony of birds and insects calling and singing] Gone about 10 minutes.

I wonder if they left the key in the ignition.

Didn't see anything.

We got some tracks.

There's 2 lionesses that were seen might have chased and taken something down.

[engine rumbles] (Grant) The interesting thing about this situation here is that these 2 lionesses didn't kill this hartebeest for themselves, and they were actually right over that ridge, and there was 2 male cheetahs here, who chased and killed this hartebeest.

And then what happened is with the distress calls of the hartebeest, the lionesses heard that, and that's what brought them down here.

When the cheetahs saw the lionesses coming, a cheetah's not even going to think twice about arguing with a lion, so the cheetahs pretty much just turned and ran.

(Rudy) So the cheetahs did the work, and the lioness is here enjoying the payoff.

(Grant) Exactly.

Because they've sacrificed all their weight and their strength for the speed, they don't have the power or even the capability to fight against the lions, so they've got to give up, otherwise it'll just end them up in some serious trouble.

(Rudy) I noticed there are quite a few giraffes and zebras that are watching all this.

(Grant) They're coming quite close now.

(Rudy) They're coming quite close.

What's with that?

They just want to make sure that these lions are occupied and doing something else and are not a threat to them, so they'll keep an eye on them.

They won't come right up to them, but they'll get to a certain distance and they'll stop.

As long as they can see them, then they're happy.

(Rudy) Here we go.

[people sing in their native language] ♪ ♪ (Rudy) Kwandwe may be the hardest place I've ever had to leave.

Never have I leapt out of bed before dawn so enthusiastically, or bemoaned the setting of the sun on a patrolling lion.

I think I could really spend my life watching a cheetah yawn, a lion stalk, warthogs turn tail and run, or giraffes stare with unbridled curiosity.

Perhaps in time these animals will regain some of the full breadth of their territories as fences drop and reserves are united.

As visitors, we should contribute, do our part to bring both preservation and responsible wildlife tourism to Africa.

When you realize you're part of the food chain in Africa, you've really arrived.

Reporting from South Africa, I'm Rudy Maxa.

See you next time...

I hope!

(Rudy) Lodging in South Africa is unusually varied, running the gamut from homestays in townships in B&B's to top flight hotels such as Cape Grace in Cape Town.

In-between are quirky, distinctive hotels that spare no luxury, such as Trogon.

A glass-walled getaway tucked in a forest along the Garden Route, it makes you feel as if you're in a 5-star treehouse.

And of course, the comforts of safari accommodations often surprise first-time visitors who expect an outdoor, summer, camplike experience.

Jewelry, textiles, and handcarved wood objects are great deals in South Africa.

The open street markets usually have the best prices, and bargaining is common and accepted.

Specialty shops such as African Image in downtown Cape Town often have unusual collector items from all over the continent.

(woman) For links and photos of the places featured in "Rudy Maxa's World," and other savvy traveling tips, visit maxa.tv.

To order DVDs of "Rudy Maxa's World," visit maxa.tv.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ CC--Armour Captioning & TPT (woman) Funding for "Rudy Maxa's World" is provided by the following... (woman) Orbitz salutes the neverending spirit of adventure and as a proud sponsor of "Rudy Maxa's World" Orbitz offers comprehensive information on the world's great destinations.

From custom vacation packages to in-depth mobile tools your trip begins on Orbitz.

Take vacation back!

[Korean janggu drums play in bright rhythm] (man) Korea, be one with earth and sky.

(woman) And by Delta, serving hundreds of destinations worldwide.

Information to plan your next trip available at delta.com.

[orchestral fanfare] ♪ ♪