X5 safari

But, most of all, they always drive fast. Really fast.

Driving at the speed limit will incur the wrath of fellow road users, who see road signs more as decoration than anything else. But they will help you see the error of your ways by sitting on your tail and flashing their lights as you dawdle along the open road at the prescribed 120km/h.

So it was a pleasure to enter the Kruger National Park in the country's north-east, where the speed limit of 40km/h for most of its 3000km of roads is strictly adhered to for one important reason; go any faster, and your chances of spotting wild animals are just about nil.

We entered the park at Malelane Gate, the closest to our departure point of Johannesburg – or, more commonly, Jo'burg, Joeys or Jozi – 400km away.

We had picked up the four-wheel-drive X5 3.0d after a warning not to swan around too much in the Beemer, because it made us a higher carjacking risk – and we were left to discover its joys for ourselves.

From front seats that are completely adjustable and remember each driver's settings to self-locking doors, the wagon lacked nothing bar the satellite tracking transponder mandatory in private Jo'burg cars if you want any chance of getting car insurance.

I ALSO opened the bonnet to have a look at the car's straight-six diesel engine, didn't recognise anything, and closed it fairly quickly.

So, having loaded the relatively small cargo space with as many clothes and groceries as it could carry, we put ourselves in the capable hands of the GPS and let it take us to the open road past block after block of high walls topped with electric fencing bearing "armed response" plates.

The N4 national highway to the Kruger is excellent – as are most major roads here – but soon the desire to try the X5 on something other than a tarred highway was gnawing at me, so we turned off to tackle the 1:8 Wonderkloof Pass.

The trip to the 1234m summit included some deep pits of red sand left by roadworks, but the BMW made them fun rather than dangerous.

There are 12 main camps, six satellite camps, five bushveld camps and a scattering of privately operated concession lodges in the Kruger, and all vary vastly in terms of size, standard and price.

Not all camps have all amenities, but most have a shop of some description and offer a choice of self-contained units or cheaper huts and the use of a communal kitchen.

We booked our three-night trip five months before leaving Australia, and the park was so booked up we were given the choice of two nights at

Berg-en-Dal and a night at Biyamiti, or looking at one of the horrifically expensive resorts that border the park.

How expensive? Our family of four's three nights' accommodation cost about $450 all-up -- that's what it costs a person, a night at neighbouring Mala Mala.

Though the river was dry, there was a waterhole towards the admin/shop part of the camp and we could see the occasional parched buck walking past.

On our second night, my wife and eldest daughter went on a night game drive with a ranger. Our four-year-old daughter was too little, so we were having a little braai of our own when we spotted a white rhino ambling through the scrub on the bank.

It was magnificent.

We hit the roads again as soon as the gates opened at sunrise.

The X5 was powerful and fast cruising on the open bitumen, but it performed even better crawling along dirt roads.

It was comfortable, had excellent visibility, was whisper-quiet (very important if you don't want to scare the game) and the airconditioning took no time to cool us down when the heat became too oppressive.

But, best of all, the sun-roof opened very wide and very long. It was perfect for up to three people to stand up in to take photographs.

Our seven-year-old discovered she could kneel on the between-seats console and travel with her head and shoulders sticking out, while holding on to the roof-bars. It was perfectly safe when we were crawling along.

We spent our first day exploring, and saw giraffe, buffalo, wildebeest, warthog and impala buck. We started out a little late on the second day, after the lads manning the petrol bowsers demanded a half-hour initiation into the wonders of the X5.

They loved it, but couldn't conceive of a car costing 600,000 grand ($130,000 & it costs $81,700 here).

We needed to transfer to Biyamiti Bushveld Camp, but realised we'd be travelling the same roads that had been devoid of much game the day before. So we left the park, hit the high-speed N4 to Komatipoort and entered the park again in the east.

The Crocodile Bridge camp, where we re-entered, is reminiscent of darkest Africa, and scattered with rondavels – one-roomed round huts with conical, thatched roofs.

It's in acacia and mopane bush savanna country, very near the Mozambique border. The only people in the park who aren't wildlife lovers are Mozambican refugees trying to run the gauntlet of predators to the relative safety and wealth of crime-ridden South Africa as quickly as possible.

These refugees have been blamed for making the park a much more dangerous place because the big cats have discovered humans are much easier to catch than, say, antelope.

THE game along these eastern roads was plentiful. We managed to spot kudu, zebra, buffalo, more impala and a pair of cheetah, which is incredibly rare.

We decided to make the most of our last day, travelling farther north than we had thus far and leaving via the Numbi Gate near Pretoriuskop camp, where we finally saw our only elephants of the trip. Had Rach not been standing with her head through the sunroof, we wouldn't have seen them above the scrub.

The moment we left the park the GPS started working again, so we programmed a course for the big smoke and inched the needle up to 120km/h again.

The trip back was uneventful, bar one unnerving incident.

I'd hit a cruising speed of 140km/h when some blokes in a BMW 3-Series sedan decided to tail-gate. I slowed down to 100 and pulled into the slow lane; they did the same. I sped up to 170 in the fast lane; they did the same.

I started to get a bit worried, but slowly it dawned on me that they were slipstreaming – a perfectly innocuous but stupid and dangerous practice.

As I said: South Africans have some strange driving habits.