Fifty-two properties. Every one chosen for the place.

The Royal Portfolio's flagship safari lodge and, for our money, the finest guiding in Africa — the team carries three of the Kruger region's Master Trackers, a near-mythical qualification. It's a collection of lodges and villas across the Thornybush reserve: classic Malewane Lodge, colourful Waterside, contemporary Farmstead, and the under-canvas Masiya's Camp. Every suite has a private plunge pool and 24-hour bush views, and the Royal Waters Spa with its 25-metre lap pool is the best way to spend the midday gap between drives.

A trio of contemporary exclusive-use villas in the legendary Sabi Sand, each taken privately with your own chef, ranger, tracker and electric game vehicle — leopard territory like nowhere else on earth. Architecturally it's a world away from thatch-and-canvas: clean lines, art, glass and a wine cellar, with the wild pressing right up to the deck.

A discreet Relais & Châteaux villa above the Atlantic in Bantry Bay, with one of the great private South African art and wine collections and a level of personal service that quietly anticipates everything. No sign at the gate, no crowd — just the ocean, the gardens and the city's best chefs at your disposal.

Built into the windowed top floors of a converted grain silo above the Zeitz MOCAA art museum, with faceted pillowed-glass windows and the most dramatic Table Mountain and harbour views in the city. Bold, art-filled and theatrical — the Royal Portfolio's city showpiece.

The grand Georgian manor at the heart of the Fancourt golf estate — the address to take if golf is the reason you're on the Garden Route, with The Links, Montagu and Outeniqua courses on your doorstep and a quiet, country-house calm to come home to.

A flamboyant, art-stuffed country house on a vine-and-plum estate in the Franschhoek valley — each suite individually and theatrically decorated, with vineyard views, a beautiful pool and the Cape's finest restaurant village at the foot of the drive.

Glass-and-steel suites cantilevered over the N'wanetsi River gorge in a private Kruger concession — modernist, light-filled and dramatic, with superb guiding and some of the best big-cat country in the park.

The grande dame of the Sabi Sand, sharing the longest unfenced boundary with the Kruger and famous for Big Five density and old-school, no-frills-but-faultless safari. Wildlife first, always.

The Oppenheimer family homestead on South Africa's largest private reserve, deep in the green Kalahari — meerkats, black-maned lions, pangolin and vast silence, taken on an exclusive-use basis with your own team.

A serene, garden-set sanctuary in Johannesburg's leafiest suburb — where Mandela finished writing Long Walk to Freedom — and the city's most gracious place to overnight between flights and the bush.

A beloved colonial-era seaside hotel beside the Umhlanga lighthouse, famous for its curry buffet and old-world charm — the perfect pause on the KZN coast around a round at Durban Country Club.

A private four-suite home in the malaria-free Phinda reserve, with your own chef, ranger and vehicle and seven distinct habitats to explore — superb for families wanting Big Five without the mosquito worry.

A fynbos-blanketed private reserve above Walker Bay, two hours from Cape Town — whale watching, ancient milkwood forests and conservation at its heart, an easy and beautiful detour around an Arabella round.

'Angama' is Swahili for suspended in mid-air, and that's exactly it — two intimate camps of fifteen glass-fronted tented suites each, perched 1,000 feet above the Mara Triangle on the edge of the Great Rift Valley, on the very ground where Out of Africa was filmed. The view from every suite is identical and astonishing; hot-air balloons drift past at sunrise; the staff are largely Maasai from the surrounding community. Owner-run, warm, and one of the great safari addresses on earth.

The famous 1930s ivy-clad manor in Karen where the resident herd of Rothschild's giraffe poke their heads through the breakfast-room windows for a treat. Only a handful of rooms, perpetually booked out — a magical, slightly surreal night or two beside Karen Country Club to open a Kenyan journey.

A family-run gem on the Lewa Conservancy, a UNESCO site and rhino stronghold beneath Mount Kenya — superb guiding, vegetable gardens, and conservation woven through everything. Featured on our Conservancy & Coast journey.

An art-and-conservation sanctuary on the Laikipia plateau, with botanical gardens, a remarkable African art collection and wide Mount Kenya views — design-led safari for travellers who want substance with their style.

Clifftop and beachfront villas above the powder-white sand of Diani, with private chefs and a barefoot-grand feel — the indulgent coastal finish to a Kenyan golf-and-safari journey.

A serene Swahili-style retreat on Manda Island in the Lamu archipelago — dhows, white sand and a slow, timeless coastal rhythm a world away from the bush.

A contemporary, light-filled lodge in the private Grumeti concession on the western Serengeti — superb for the migration as the herds move through, with the exclusivity and guiding Singita is famous for and barely another vehicle in sight.

Geodesic domed suites high in the forested Ngorongoro highlands — warm, characterful and dramatic, the most comfortable base for an early descent into the Crater before the day-trippers arrive.

A design-led beach resort on Zanzibar's north-west coast, with bungalows tumbling down to one of the island's best swimming beaches — the spice-island finish to a Tanzanian journey.

An elegant lodge set in a towering eucalyptus forest at the base of the Virunga volcanoes, minutes from the gorilla-trek start point — log fires, mountain views, spa and serious comfort for the cold dawn starts and muddy-booted returns.

Wilderness Safaris' iconic forest-villa lodge in the eroded cone of an extinct volcano — striking thatched, nest-like villas, a vast reforestation project and gorilla treks from the door. One of the most photographed lodges in Africa.

A tea-estate lodge on the edge of ancient Nyungwe rainforest — chimpanzee tracking, a canopy walkway and misted forest calm, for travellers extending beyond the gorillas into Rwanda's wilder south.

Often called the best safari camp in Africa — on Chief's Island in the heart of the Okavango, with wildlife density that has to be seen to be believed and a light, luxurious, raised-walkway design. The 'place of plenty', and it earns the name.

A legendary 1940s-style green-canvas camp on the edge of the vast Makgadikgadi salt pans — meerkats, desert-walking with Zu/'hoasi Bushmen, quad bikes across the pans and a Persian-rug, museum-tent romance found nowhere else.

Just four enormous tented suites on the private Selinda Reserve — vast, eco-conscious, copper-bathtub luxury with a personal pace and big-game wilderness all around.

On the hill above the Chobe River near the Falls, famous for its elephant herds and river cruises — an easy, game-rich link between Victoria Falls and the Delta.

A desert oasis at the gateway to Sossusvlei's towering red dunes, with private plunge pools, rooftop star-beds for sleeping out under the clearest skies on earth, and a private gate to the dunes for first light on Big Daddy and Deadvlei.

Raised wooden chalets open to the dunes of the private NamibRand reserve — vast, silent, conservation-led desert wilderness and some of the best dark skies in Africa.

A remote camp in the far north-west between the Skeleton Coast and Damaraland — desert-adapted elephant and lion, a fly-in adventure to the Atlantic's seal colonies and shipwrecks for the true explorer.

A smart seafront hotel in colonial Swakopmund, on the spit where the desert meets the Atlantic — the comfortable coastal base for a round at Rossmund and the town's quirky German-Namibian charm.

The grande dame of the Falls, an Edwardian railway hotel from 1904 with a palm-lined terrace looking straight down the gorge to the Falls' spray and the bridge. High tea on the terrace is an institution, and you can walk to the Falls themselves through the hotel grounds.

An intimate tented camp on a seasonal floodplain in Hwange, where elephants drink from the camp's own pool in the dry season — classic, game-rich Zimbabwean bush with superb guiding.

A rustic, authentic camp in the UNESCO wilderness of Mana Pools — home of the walking safari and the famous standing 'Boswell' elephants, for travellers who want their wild raw and on foot.

A colonial-style hotel right on the bank of the Zambezi, upstream of the Falls — zebra and giraffe wander the lawns, and you can walk to the lip of the Falls along a private path. Sundowners on the riverside deck as the spray catches the light is the moment of any Zambian trip.

A pioneering family-run camp in the Lower Zambezi National Park — superb canoeing, walking and boating safaris on and along the great river, with elephant and buffalo at the door.

A sleek, contemporary Norman Carr Safaris camp in South Luangwa — the birthplace of the walking safari, with arguably the best guides in Africa and the continent's most reliable leopard viewing.

The legendary Mauritian resort on its own peninsula at Belle Mare, with a nine-hole Gary Player course, a vast lagoon and a level of service that's been bringing families back for generations — the blissful island finish where golfers play and everyone else simply melts into the lagoon.

A stylish resort with its own island and the spectacular Bernhard Langer-designed Ile aux Cerfs course, reached by boat across a turquoise lagoon — arguably the most beautiful island golf in the world.

Barefoot luxury villas on a castaway island in the Bazaruto Archipelago — dhows, snorkelling, flamingos and total seclusion, the wildest and most romantic of the Indian Ocean finishes.