As I held on tight and leaned further into the Land Rover to keep branches from whipping into my face, it occurred to me that this felt a lot like the safari ride I once took at Disney World, except that this was not pretend.
Our guide had received a call about a rare leopard sighting, and he was racing along the preserve’s roads, taking the tight turns like an experienced Formula 1 racecar driver. Neither large bumps nor deep divots in the narrow sandy track slowed him down. But instead of a black-and-white checkered flag, our goal was a gold-and-black spotted cat, one of the more elusive of Africa’s “Big Five”.