Imagine starting a journey at the edge of a volcanic crater, where there's a prompt earthquake every hour, and ending up at the foot of a tall African termites' nest with a jukebox above it. In between are sojourns in two vastly different game reserves, which include being intimately surrounded by lions, chased by an elephant and having your sandals sucked by a family of banded mongoose. It sounds surreal, but that's how it happened on a recent trip to South Africa's North West Province.

Two and a half hours' drive from Johannesburg, we reached the lip of that crater and saw the spires of the Palace of the Lost City suffused, Disney-style, in gold morning light. On arrival, we passed a fountain gushing, rather surprisingly, out of enormous sable antelope horns. For every horn there was someone being photographed or filmed.

More snapping and whirring in the grand loggia, where the reception desk was dwarfed by painted domed ceilings, lofty zebra-striped window frames, a grand arrangement of lilies and vast tapestries featuring African animals. On the marble floor lay a small Japanese boy, seemingly overcome by this welcome to Sun City's adaptation of the African experience.

The Palace of the Lost City is the flagship hotel of the Sun City resort (which also includes the Cascades Hotel, the old Sun City hotel and the Cabanas). The resort is the obvious gateway to the now-important Pilanesberg National Park, which is situated within a 1.2 billion-year-old volcanic crater. The resort's original raison d'etre, as a gambling Vegas-themed Mecca for South Africans, exists only on a minor scale today. Sun City's emphasis is now much more focused on the African experience, especially with the construction of the Palace of the Lost City, which has as its theme a remote tribal African fantasy.

Beyond the Palace are its jungly gardens, Grand Pool and the Valley of the Waves. Nearby, the Bridge of Time (lined with elephants) leads to the Entertainment Centre. Every hour there's a powerful booming and billowing of smoke from the elephants' direction. The bridge shakes to simulate the rest of the earthquake. You hear that sound all over the Palace grounds.

The Valley of the Waves looks quite like a natural beach alongside the Roaring Lagoon, which features 1.8-metre waves that appear every 90 seconds during a half-hour period. Otherwise the water is on "bob cycle", as one of the lifesavers informed me. People of all ages were in the water or lazing on the grassy slopes.

About 15km from Sun City, where too much art can possibly imitate too much life, is the Kwa Maritane gate into the Pilanesberg Park, founded in 1979. Since I'd last visited this reserve the veld had turned a refreshing new green. Sunlight was shifting zippily between busy clouds from hill to hill. These summits more or less form four concentric rings within the extinct, alkaline volcanic crater. Because of its location, the park is round, as well as large, at 56,000ha. Unlike Kruger, Pilanesberg is free from malaria. However it does have the Big Five, in addition to 50 other mammal species and 354 types of bird.

We found the reserve bursting with new life. The sun suddenly lit a small group of wildebeest with calves. While wildebeest generally look a little uncomfortably prehistoric, their young resemble small Swiss ponies. The warthog all had trotting piglets, as quick and compact as their parents, and we soon saw junior waterbuck, hartebeest, springbok and an adolescent elephant.

Just after four o'clock large, jam-packed game-viewing trucks started to rumble onto the park roads from the various lodges within Pilanesberg and from Sun City. The Mankwe Dam, in the centre of the reserve, was once the conduit for lava during the volcanic era, 1.3 billion years ago. Today it is a calm lake with a hide built over the water. Nearby was a pink building with "Magistrate's Court, 1936" written on it and encouraging signs about refreshments. While we bought cold drinks, there was a downpour and three big game vehicles disgorged about 70 very wet tourists, including a smiling Chinese man who had thought to bring a bright umbrella. We drove out of Pilanesberg alongside a rainbow.

Next morning we returned and looked up Mandy Momberg, a tall, tanned Resouces Utilization Ranger. As we chatted in her 4x4, a hornbill jumped all over the mirror and windscreen, pecking furiously at its reflection. Mandy was excited about a new pack of wild dog that had just been released into the park. An earlier pack had settled in the north and had learned to kill prey by luring it into the electric fence there. "Perhaps these ones will be more tourist friendly," she joked.

We watched a Black rhino and she explained the ear notch system wardens use to track them throughout southern Africa. The North West Parks Board has led the ecological way in terms of lion vasectomies to prevent inbreeding of the disease-free lions, originally brought in from Etosha in Namibia. There have been other innovations, including the introduction of a big bull elephant to sort out the behaviour of younger elephants that were killing rhino.

"And to think that when they offered me this job, I turned it down at first because I thought the park was too established!" laughs Mandy.

Peripheral roads are being laid to open up Pilanesberg. Already the density of visitors is three times that of the Kruger Park, at around 350,000 annually. As we left, Mandy mentioned a plan to link Pilanesberg with Madikwe Game Reserve, 60km north-west on the border with Botswana.

Back at the Palace of the Lost City, Philip (my companion) and I took the lift nine floors up and a further few flights of stairs to the King's Tower, from where we couldn't help but be impressed by the immensity and complexity of the hotel. Directly below me, on each corner of the tower, kudu statues leapt from lotus flowers. "I'm almost outglitzed," said Philip later, as we headed for Madikwe.

Also malaria-free, Madikwe was only founded in 1991 but is already 19,000ha bigger than Pilanesberg, and growing - as we were to discover. Local communities were not removed to make way for the reserve (unlike Pilanesberg, where they have now been wooed back). Today both parks operate on a "partnership in conservation" basis, in a mutually beneficial triangular relationship between the North West Parks Board, the private sector and local communities.

Madikwe is famous for wild dog and the Big Five. We entered at the Abjaterskop gate, an unnecessarily long route but one which allowed us to spend a satisfying time viewing impala, baboon, hartebeest, wildebeest, zebra, warthog and elephant. After Kruger, Madikwe supports South Africa's second-largest elephant population.

Madikwe River Lodge follows the bank of the Groot Marico River, made famous by South Africa's Herman Charles Bosman, who featured the area in many of his stories. Arthur Collett and his wife Dionne Sachs took over the fully renovated lodge a year ago. It is a place of dark wood and calm. Individual, luxurious chalets have their own viewing decks overlooking the river, which was swollen when we arrived. The previous year there'd been a severe flood.

Madikwe's game roads and tracks are quiet: the lodge has four ten-seater game-viewing vehicles; private vehicles are not allowed. Young, enthusiastic, snake-handling Andrew was our ranger: the first thing he did on our drive was release a small egg-eater snake he'd found at the lodge into a tree. Then he casually told us that we were alongside a pride of five young lions. They were flopping lazily around in the sand four metres from the vehicle, seemingly unconcerned by us.

We watched giraffe and their young, equally relaxed, meandering slowly through the bush, and then we cautiously approached a large herd of elephant with calves. We were fairly close when, after a crazy trumpet, a matriarch came at us. Hers was no mock charge. We needed to cross the line of elephant ahead to get away and any of them could also have charged. Andrew flung the 4x4 forward nevertheless and thankfully the animals were accommodating. The matriarch plunged through the bush after our fleeing vehicle. I felt quite pale when she finally called off the chase. Most of Madikwe's elephants were relocated from Gonarezhou in Zimbabwe, where they'd been hunted, and many haven't forgotten. The four casual cheetah we saw next were something of a welcome relief, as was a placid family of White rhino with young.

On our early morning game drive, conditions were overcast and cool. Everything seemed quiet. It was - only it was moving. We were completely surrounded by six silent male lions, slowly padding along the track by the now stationary vehicle, eyeing each human. Still a little mindful of the elephant the night before, I was not confident about being looked over by one of the strong, silent type from only two metres away. It's the closest I've ever been to so many wild lions.

During a coffee break, Andrew laid out fruit, biscuits, various teas and coffee on a wooden trunk. Back at base, breakfast proper was presented. Madikwe River Lodge doesn't hold with self-service meals. We sat out on the deck with coffee afterwards and a large mongoose family drew closer by degrees, sniffing the breakfast air. One of them was taken by my sandals (decorated with goats' hair). In no time I had half the furry family over my feet, sucking the hairs on the sandals, others standing upright alongside, awaiting a turn.

Further south in the park is Jaci's Safari Lodge, on a waterhole alongside the Groot Marico. Our final approach was via a rustic swing bridge across the river, looking onto the main lodge built around a giant termites' nest. Jaci van Heteren's handwritten scrapbook records the lodge's construction, complete with wild dogs hanging around and drawbacks such as equipment being washed away in the floods. Jaci's Lodge is fascinatingly decorated and furnished - sprawling and organic. Bright stone, thatch and canvas rooms lift the spirit. The lively mood here is probably hers, for Jaci is an exuberant person with an artist's eye.

Here our ranger was Jo, a quietly confident young man with a ticklish sense of humour, who was also an assiduous host. On bush drives he relied less on radio contact to guide him to game and more on his own knowledge of the wild. Jo brimmed with bird and veld lore. We spotted the lions again, tracked cheetah and saw buffalo. Towards sunset we met up with Steve Dell, Madikwe's Field Ecologist, who elaborated on the Heritage Park plans to link Madikwe with Pilanesberg and further ideas of linking the whole area with land in Botswana as a Peace Park. "But that could still take twenty or thirty years," he cautioned.

He also explained that Madikwe was itself expanding constantly, thanks to increasing private investment: the reserve has become a model for turning conservation into viable business that benefits everyone concerned. "People are knocking on our door asking to fund further projects because we've managed the previous ones so well. And we've had the courage to spend our money."

As further planned lodges come into being, there'll eventually be 650 beds within Madikwe and 65 vehicles. But Steve emphasises that conservation won't be sacrificed, especially since the Madikwe model is already a proven working one. "This job is probably a conservationist's dream. I've only been here a year and suddenly I'm catching and collaring lions." He demonstrated his telemetry kit for keeping tabs on collared lion, elephant, rhino and wild dog.

Jaci's has, in the short time it's been open, become renowned for its cuisine, thanks largely to Jaci herself and to the brilliant chef, David Fiser. Everything is made on site, even the jams, using the freshest ingredients; dinners are cooked on the fire. Our meal in the open air boma (enclosure) featured sublime pumpkin soup, fillet cooked over the coals with a peppercorn sauce and an iced lemon parfait with fresh pineapple sauce, which Philip thought was the nicest thing he'd ever had.

Later, I stole upstairs to look at the bar and reading room. There it was: the '50s jukebox, next to the grass baskets, under the thatch. At Jaci's Safari Lodge, it somehow looked just right.

Marie-Lais Emond is a Johannesburg-based freelance writer. She often goes on assignment around Africa with the photographer Philip Schedler

North West Province Factfile

Getting There: There are daily flights and coaches from Johannesburg to Pilanesberg and Sun City, and driving or hitching is straightforward. Sun City is a two-hour drive from Johannesburg. Madikwe Game Reserve is 50% larger than Pilanesberg and lies near the Botswana border, about 300km from Johannesburg and an hour's drive from Sun City.

Accommodation: Sun City is located very near Pilanesberg, while Legacy Hotels operate three quality safari lodges at the park: Tshukudu, Bakubung and Kwa Maritane. Madikwe Game Reserve currently boasts five facilities: Madikwe River Lodge and its sister Bush Lodge, Jaci's Safari Lodge, Tau Game Lodge (30 chalets) and the rustic Mosetlha Bush Camp.

When To Go: Game viewing is best during winter (May to August), when the grass is low and the daytime temperatures are easier to handle. Rain falls mainly in the summer months (October to March).

Published in Travel Africa Edition Nineteen: Spring 2002.Text is subject to Worldwide Copyright (c)