Hurricane lanterns flicker in the gathering darkness as he tells his wide-eyed listeners about the German photographer who recently lost his life on a walking safari in adjacent Kruger National Park. The lensman ignored instructions to back away slowly from an elephant and was gored when he broke into a run.

A few months earlier, a leopard killed a Kruger guide who slipped away from his Land Rover for a quick smoke while his charges were enjoying their gin and tonics at sundown. And people still talk about the woman who, several years ago, left an evening barbecue to fetch a sweater -- only to be mauled by a lion before she reached her room.

As if on cue, the floodlights aimed at a watering hole less than 100 yards from the Savanna Tented Safari Lodge's open-air dining room capture the glare of a lumbering male lion. Lesson complete, the Savanna's guests retire to their quarters with security-guard escorts -- and dream of the wild amid the civilized confines of hand-embroidered linen sheets.

While lacking the sweeping plains and thundering migrations of Kenya and Tanzania, South Africa's privately owned, 225-square-mile Sabi Sand Game Reserve provides some of the continent's most pampered and rewarding wildlife viewing. Travelers who spend two or three days here are all but guaranteed to spot Africa's Big Five -- cape buffalo, elephant, leopard, lion and white rhino -- not to mention prodigious quantities of such denizens as giraffes, impala and zebra.

And thanks to a national currency that's slumped 20% against the U.S. dollar over the past year, a stay at one of Sabi Sand's growing number of small luxury lodges, though still expensive, has become a relative bargain. Rates range from about $200 to $650 per person, per day, including room, meals and game drives in open-topped vehicles that often come within a few yards of remarkably nonchalant animals.

Sabi Sand, like a handful of other private game reserves in South Africa's northeast corner, owes its existence to 7,600-square-mile Kruger National Park. Created a century ago, Kruger remains one of the continent's largest, most diverse and best-managed wildlife refuges. It's also among the most popular, with easy accessibility, well-paved roads and motel-style lodgings attracting hordes of South African families.

But Sabi Sand, which became a conservation area after farming proved unprofitable, offers visitors a far more cosseted -- if sometimes contrived -- view of the wild kingdom.

Accommodations leading the pack in over-the-top opulence are Singita Boulders and Singita Ebony, a pair of nine-room lodges perched above the wildlife-rich Sand River. Some Singita guests never bother to leave their suites, all of which come with fireplaces and plunge pools. Those who do can work out in the health spa, check e-mail on the library computer or toast a successful drive by sampling local vintages in the 12,000-bottle wine cellar.

At Sabi Sand's new Leopard Hills, the sybaritic indoor/outdoor rock showers overlook an expanse of bush favored by a troop of noisy baboons. Leopard Hills' resident toddler, manager Duncan Rodgers' daughter, knows every animal in The Lion King by name -- and isn't afraid to express a proprietary annoyance when an elephant appropriates her sandbox.

Sabi Sand safari life follows a highly structured routine. Travelers are roused early for a prebreakfast game drive, return to their lodges for a few hours of relaxing, guided walks or organizing bird-life lists, and head out for another four-hour excursion that extends well past sunset, including a stop for cocktails in the bush. Dinners are often served in an open-air boma, or enclosed corral, accompanied by candlelight and African entertainment.

For all its creature comforts, Sabi Sands remains best known for its wildlife. And Mala- Mala, the reserve's most famous safari camp, is a master at delivering the goods.

Maintaining constant radio contact with other MalaMala drivers to ensure no more than three vehicles at one sighting, the camp's uniformly young, dapper white male game rangers bash through the bush in hot pursuit of the Big Five -- stopping along the way to expound on the marvels of termite mounds and elephant dung.

But the Disneyesque atmosphere evaporates when a MalaMala Land Rover pulls up to a tree in which a leopard is crunching noisily on the bloodied remains of a young impala.

"No animal dies a peaceful death in Africa," says ranger Quentin Haddon, reminding his awe-struck charges to stay in their seats.

It's an admonishment he doesn't need to repeat.