On we drive under a searing sun, past a waving boy on his long trek to school, past a brightly scarved woman hoeing the land, past roadside piles of sweet potatoes, past jackal buzzards lounging on telephone lines like royal princes. This is the location of the 2003 cricket World Cup and it's a got a notch or two on Birmingham where, on a drizzly May day last time round, England were knocked out in the first round and a(nother) pipe-dream came to an end.
Next February and March, the whole 14-nation shebang will be in full-flow again, having moved due south to Africa for the first time in its history. And South Africa - confused, brilliant, flawed South Africa - will host the vast majority of the games.
Cricket was always the game of the gin-and-tonic white South African man, but he has seen his team vulcanised to the limit in the years since readmission. They were a talented bunch with a team spirit coveted jealously by England. But that spirit crumbled in 2000 when the captain, the revered born-again Christian Hansie Cronje, was discovered neck-deep in a match-fixing scandal that mesmerised and mortified the nation. He was fired, in disgrace, and earlier this year, in a final savage twist, was killed in a light-aircraft crash aged only 32. Since his fall, the team has wobbled, and public rows about the racial makeup of the side have grown louder. The team, as the cricket, as the country, is in a period of transition.
So this World Cup is being seen as the ultimate evangelising tool. Games are being taken out of the white citadels and the organisers promise an African tournament. "This will not be another Euro-centric event," says Jos Charle, the tournament's joint communications director. "We believe that the African beat will have its own call, its own sound. If you've got rhythm, and we've got rhythm, you'll have a good time."
But just what South African "African" means is a difficult to put a finger on. Is it the gleaming hotels of Durban, is it the gorgeous but alien purple jacaranda, the midnight owl screeching through the trees, the giraffe striding its slow, loping pattern through the bush? Is it the women winding their long way down endless country roads, the run-down townships, the young black boy in the prestigious uniform of a Pietermaritzburg public school - a bag full of books on his back and a straw boater perched on his head?
The answer was certainly not hitting us over the head after a week - but what we did see was a beautiful, often confusing, frequently joyful country. It was our guide in Mpumalanga (formerly Eastern Transvaal) who summed things up as we drove through the mango groves, coffee plantations and identical forests of water-sapping eucalpytus. Refilwe, in her early 30s, was brought up in Soweto and she loves her reclaimed land.
"I tell visitors to South Africa that we are only eight years old, that the best is yet to come," she says. "We are learning all the time about everything. We were told that our African history was worthless and barbaric, but in some ways apartheid was a blessing in disguise because it allowed our culture to continue undiluted. Now I can tell you that history which we weren't allowed to tell for so long."
She talks of tribes and ancestors, chiefs and languages - South Africa has 11 official ones - and how she grew up, eating and sleeping on the floor of the house in case of sudden gunfire. But yet she has no bitterness. When, in a hotel, an enclave of old South African attitudes, Refilwe and here colleagues are snubbed, her colleague Titus just shrugs and says: "We will keep trying."
That capacity for forgiveness is matched only by the ancient landscape, the vastness of the horizon, and the animals, some that have surely walked straight out of a joke book. The Kruger National Park in Mpumalanga, an area the size of Wales, provides one of the best chances of seeing the big five - elephant, buffalo, lion, leopard, and rhino - and pulls people from all over the world.
We first experience it under blankets in an open-sided bus. The night is thick and the engine switched off - all you hear is the soaring crackle of the crickets, the creaking, shifting bush and your own noisy imagination as each hair slowly prickles down your neck. Could that crunch have been an elephant, or was it that hulk of a white rhino that thundered into the path of the bus just as dusk turned to darkness and stared for 20 seconds, before reluctantly trudging off to chase something more pliable.
The dawn and dusk game drive is the manna of the African safari and the only choice you have to make is whether you will share the sheer disbelief of seeing a warthog in the company of knee-high socked, bearded South Africans, or fantastically rich Americans. If it is economy you are after, then self-drive from the Kruger headquarters at Skukuza, with its simple huts and a picnic area on the banks of a river where crocodiles doze away the day disguising themselves as logs, and tall reeds rustle like lines of Victorian parasols.
If luxury is your thing, then do it here because the first lesson of the British tourist in South Africa is that, at the moment, you can spend like a middle-manager and live like a emperor.
Sabi-Sabi, on the edge of the Kruger, practically drowns in its own luxury. The camp is lit by oil lamps, the huts are stunning, you eat tender delicacies on a veranda overlooking a water hole where an elephant completes his afternoon ablutions, lifting his trunk high, his legs wide like he's doing the clean and jerk. Beside him, baboons flex their bony fingers and groom themselves. And there is no such thing as a bus safari here, just open-top Jeeps that seat five before driving off road, deep into the bush. There, from nowhere, we find lions lazily flicking away the early hours of night before hunting. They sleep, mate, then walk past us, a mane brushing against the door - it is absolutely terrifying. Here, despite the over-attentive service, you begin to see just why the sons of empire were so reluctant to give up their lifestyle.
An hour's flight from Mpumalanga is Durban. This is a different world - a buzzing city of contradictions, where temples compete with churches and a huge painted message shouts "Islam calls you". Outside the centre of the city, lines of grand houses hide behind angry security gates.
Drive from Durban into Zulu Land, along clear and well maintained roads, and you come to Alan Paton country, "lovely beyond any singing of it". It is stunning - with every green in the world jostling for space. Here you can hike, ride or just sit and watch the primary-coloured birds pipe foreign songs. But we are moving on, past the township of Wembesi, surrounded by the relics of over-grazed soil, to the Drakensberg mountains.
The moon is just rising when we turn down the 25km dirt track to the hotel. The clouds gather, crotchety as old men, and our bones rattle with the pebbles. The trees go black as dusk suddenly becomes night and all you can see is the snow on the top of the mountains - it seems the Scottish Highlands have moved to southern Africa.
The Drakensberg Golf and Leisure resort is more like something out of 1950s USA: golf course, pool, entertainment for the kids, an unsophisticated restaurant and the utter quiet of the mountains. We blow dragon's breath as we trudge towards our chalets, warmed by a swift glass of brandy and slowly defrost our fingers before falling asleep. In the morning, the sun shines and the grass shimmers, the rocks above us stick out in spiny fingers, rugged like Scarborough. On a short walk around the resort, we wander past baboons, flocks of swooping birds and flick-tongued lizards.
Suddenly, it is time to go. The night before the flight, we watch a musical in a cultural village, Shananga. It is an incredible three-hour open-air pageant, telling the story of the local tribe - their battles, their rites of passage, their forced removal to the mines and their return. At the end, the performers stand together and sing the national anthem Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika, as the passengers had when our plane landed on the steamy Johannesburg runway. The proud, clear voices rise into the night sky. This will be somewhere special to watch cricket.
Way to go
Getting there:
Living with the Lions (0870 4440007, livingwiththelions.co.uk) offers a 12-day trip taking in three of England's matches, against Pakistan, Australia and India, from £2,195pp twin share. Includes all flights, tickets, five-star B&B and transfers. Also flight and ticket-only package for £649. South African Airways flies to Johannesburg from £590 plus taxes in February.
Accommodation:
Selati Lodge, Sabi Sabi (+157817325, sabi.krugerpark.co.za/sabi-sabi-selati-lodge.html) £310pp per night inclusive. Skukuza camp (+13735 6106, krugerpark.co.za/skukuza-camp.html) from £150pp per night in a hut. Drakensberg golf and leisure resort (+ 3370 11355, goodersonleisure.com/fdrak.htm), £434pp B&B.
Further Information: South African Tourist Board southafrica.net, cricketworldcup.com|.
Country code: 0027.
Flight time London-Johannesburg:10hrs.
Time difference: +2hrs.
£1= 13.74 rand.
England fixtures
February 13
England v Zimbabwe
Harare Sports Club, Harare.
February 16
England v Holland
Buffalo Park, East London.
February 19
England v Namibia
St Georges Park, Port Elizabeth.
February 22
England v Pakistan
Newlands, Cape Town.
February 26
England v India
Kingsmead, Durban.
March 2
England v Australia
St George's Park, Port Elizabeth.
