In the savage bush of South Africa one is either predator or prey. From sundown to sun-up the daytime beauty of red earth, white sands, lush green forests and burnt grey scrub turns into the killing fields - literally.
These are the fast-food hours of the bush, when lions stalk wildebeest, leopards take on young zebras and jackals and vultures wait for leftovers. The rest just hide and hope for the best.
It's a harsh place to be taking a walk and I'm glad I have a ranger with a gun: Mark Shaw is guiding me and four others through the bushland of the Sabi Sands region on the border of the Kruger National Park. We're hunting for any sign of rhinoceroses or elephants, two critters too big to hide - or so I thought. I've been awake since 5am, when we were roused from our slumbers with hot coffee and fresh biscuits baked on an open fire by Elneck, our resident chef. What this man can do with an open flame would make the devil envious.
A leopard has left clear imprints around our canvas tents - with their flush toilets and private bucket showers filled with warm water heated on Elneck's fire and filled by Kenneth, our resident security guard. I am told Kenneth's job is to keep the leopards at bay.
He may want to consider his career options because it's clear a cat has been through camp and I am thrilled - although disappointed I slept through it. My fellow campers tell me I even slept through the lions roaring from the other side of the river bed our tents overlook. I blame the plush beds, more suited to a five-star hotel than a canvas canopy.
There is an art to bushwalking here and one simple rule: stay alive. One wrong turn and you could run into a pride of lions or encounter the animal that kills more humans annually than any other: the hippopotamus. If that's not enough to keep us following the footsteps of Shaw and his local tracker, Andrew, then the idea we may stumble upon an angry buffalo is. Solo buffalos are not to be taken lightly because they're usually old, usually grumpy and almost always aggressive.