Africa is splitting apart. That ripper, slow but sure, provides some of the world’s most rewarding escapes. The last time it split, it gifted us South America. For now, we must happily settle for a rift valley that runs from Ethiopia through Botswana. Rift valleys bring nutrients from water flows, eroded plateaus and the earth’s crust. Africa’s rift valleys give us our earliest discoveries of our ancestors, and the world’s most treasured conservation systems. Travel them.

There are a number of high quality safari, lodge and resort experiences to choose from. Spectacular game and eco-adventures, unique and diverse ecology, and the very appealing feature of far fewer people and vehicles cluttering up the landscape have me favoring the part of the rift from Victoria Falls south. Most personal favorites are upper-end - and luxury is never so highlighted as with growling predators or screaming prey outside one’s tent or plunge pool deck - but there are a range of options that still provide solid wilderness experiences and comfort is relative.

The Africa Adventure Company, a Florida-based tour booking operation, offers excellent advice on the many forks in Africa’s roads, tailored to interests, budgets and timing. . www.africa-adventure.com. Among the options in southern Africa are many associated with award-winning safari operator Wilderness Safaris, www.wilderness-safaris.com. Many camps underpin worthwhile environmental and community projects, of increasing importance to many concerned with the impacts of their travel choices. Fellow guests are another attraction, generally a worldly and eclectic group find their way to these camps, most of which are accessed by small plane, often by necessity

Battling giraffes in the Okavango Delta

The River Club, Victoria Falls – One of Africa’s class acts, the River Club, is in Zambia near Victoria Falls. Former British army officer Peter Jones converted a colonial-styled home to the resort’s center of gravity where terrific, somewhat raucous meals are usually headlined by Jones, an amiable raconteur. He added ten split-level bungalows that overhanging and open to the Zambezi River and loads of hippos and crocodiles which remain mum about what they see. Local activities are plentiful and stunners, from hiking across from Victoria Falls to fishing for tiger fish to rafting the Zambezi, a Class V ride many rafters consider the top of the line. My raft was flipped end over end - fortunately hippos and crocs don’t favor the rapids - and as a curled ball I shot through about three blocks of rapids before crawling out of chaos onto the raft. Another thriller is the Zambezi Swing, 53 meters of unfettered free fall down a sheer cliff before a line connected to another stretched across the canyon whipped me into a pendulum across treetops and boulders. But the most thought-provoking offering is nearby Simonga village, "adopted" by Jones, who often enlists his guests finding ways to assist the villagers. Victories thus far include a school, medical assistance and water wells that free women from hauling water from the river, and from croc attacks that took victims yearly.

Jack’s Camp, Kalahari Desert, Botswana – This 1940’s styled classic safari camp, surrounded by umbrella thorns and desert palms, first established by the late trapper Jack Bousfield, is amid the Makgadikgadi salt pans, edging the world’s largest, left after the rift fractured the crust, draining an enormous lake. The main tent is a museum of everything you wanted growing up - skeletons, stuffed lion, billiards table, etc.- but that few better halves would long tolerate. Like most camps, seasons and rainfall pick the dominant activities. When dry, guests go motor’n across the vast, empty pans on 4WD quad bikes. When the pans get soggy, huge bird migrations arrive, including flocks of flamingos. As the wet season approaches, game drives can follow vast herds of zebra and wildebeest, as do predators, as they move continually toward flashes of lightning and dark clouds, seeking the life sustaining rains. User-friendly meercats, camped beneath the world’s largest baobab tree, are an otherworldly treat. But the best offerings are the game and nature hikes with Kalahari Bushmen, who impart their hard-won lore of survival, and an aboriginal lifestyle, a mystic bond with nature, on borrowed time. How did they work out that a particular beetle that fed on a particular tree produced a poison they could use on arrows in a way that didn’t contaminate the meat? How did anyone survive in this place? Tried the hoo-doo plant, used to suppress hunger and thirst and rev energy during the hunt, and it works. Can’t speak to other claims. I hope the Bushmen get a proper share from products derived from the "discovery" of this plant, which they’ve used for centuries. If I patent it for jet lag, I’ll give them their due; even they haven’t much used it for that purpose.

Jao Camp, Botswana, Okavango Delta – The Okavango Delta is a flood plain end-of-the-rift miracle of wetlands and grasslands in the middle of the Kalahari, fed by floodwaters flowing from central Angola. By the time the shallow waters hit the delta, filtered by sandbanks and papyrus beds and bathed in sunlight, the water is pure and clean, the wildlife on the bordering plains and many islands exist in staggering proportions. Jao is a luxury camp, an architectural marvel with tented spaces you’d kill to have as a condo in Manhattan. It’s birder paradise. I stepped out of my tent and saw a rare Pel’s fishing owl, a feathered friend that puts birders in orgasmic trance. Endangered wattled cranes everywhere, as are Kori Bustards - guides love to yell, "BIG BUSTARD!" when spotting the heaviest airborne.

Hippo breaching

A terrific spectacle is the night of the flying termites, as huge Jurassic Park vintage termite mounds - often the seedlings of delta islands - surround the camp. On one rainy night each year, zillions fly out, to the delight of locals who cook ’em up. Puts quite a spin on dinner as glasses with fine wines become swimming pools so one sips through clenched teeth to wash down oddly crunchy mashed potatoes.

A lightning strike put part of the island on fire three weeks prior, at night parts of dense leadwood trees still glowed red and their burning roots made chunks of ground perilous, but new palm tree shoots were already springing forth everywhere, pleasing baby elephants and showcasing a Delta island life cycle.

Double rainbow rising from the papyrus, hippos to the left of me, croc to the right of me, being told by my cocky guide, "I only fish where there’s fish to be caught" and POINT FIVE seconds later catching the mother of all African pikes before retreating to the Land Rover as the hippos advanced - priceless.

The other threat is younger generations not understanding the delta’s value to them, ecological and economic. Jao Camp’s owners have nearby camps that devote part of a season to underprivileged kids, including AIDS orphans and street children, to acquaint them with aspect of their nature heritage most have never encountered. Ask for some time to visit, perhaps take a ride with them in a makoro, the local dugout canoe powered by a man with a pole.

Homework, African style

Mombo Camp, Botswana, Okavango Delta – A progressive, stable, diamond-wealthy government, and understanding tribal peoples, make the Okavango a masterstroke of preservation, but Namibia threatens the fragile ecology with a project that would draw off some of its waters. This high luxury outpost - the crown prince of Saudi Arabia once took it over for a week and customized it for his family, absurdly gilding the lily - is located in the Moremi Game Reserve on Chief’s Island. The largest island in the delta, it provides a captive cast of wildlife, viewing of which is perhaps the best in southern Africa. A preferred locale for wildlife documentaries, area projects by Wilderness Safaris include the recent reintroduction of rhino, which had been poached out of Botswana. Predators abound, including a couple dozen leopards near camp, and one of the largest populations of endangered wild dogs. Sometimes it seems you can’t throw a rock without hitting a lion. A range of other camps are in distant parts of the island. Even in such a remote spot, the impact of AIDS on this country is felt, as on any given day a large chunk of staff is gone attending funerals, a sobering reminder of one of the region’s greatest challenges, which many camps try to address with health education in local villages.

Audi Camp, Maun, Botswana – Maun is a hole, but it’s a staging and take-off point for the far reaches of Botswana. Though it has some fancy tents, Audi Camp, is mostly humbler but inexpensive digs, often for folks in their own vehicles. Kick back in the pool and bar, which collects an eclectic cast of characters, including bush pilots - watch your girl around them, they’re near the top of the predator line - blowhard camp owners (the local sheiks), recovering Peace Corps volunteers, TV animal program hosts who make guides cringe, and guides who can tell great stories of stupid client tricks and partly faked wildlife documentaries. Feel the pain of the guide who had an unheard-of but real wildlife coup, coming across a hyena and a leopard, sworn enemies, sleeping peacefully together, a wildlife Romeo and Juliet, discovering his camera battery was kaput. Though threatened with 10 million dollar penalties if they talk - a great joke in a town of low salaries and the world’s highest per capita consumption of beer - some locals who worked on the Amazing Race will tell great stories of foolishness and risks, and of the real race, apparently a legion of TV industry sycophants who put the program together, backbiting their way up the show’s hierarchy. The bar is a better show. emma@okavangocamp.com

Skeleton Coast Camp, Namibia – Drift from the rift to the Atlantic, atop the stunning Namibian coastline near Angola, and you’re on the Skeleton Coast, the best named locale on earth, plentiful bones, including of shipwrecks. The reefs are like grinders along the most treacherous coast that claimed many victims. If sailors made it ashore, miraculously, no boat could rescue them, they didn’t last long, surrounded by the vast Namib Desert, and beyond that the Kalahari. That isolation is maintained at a camp limited to 12 people, in a park of over 2,000 square miles. Flora and fauna are scarce but fascinating in their adaptations. The hemisphere’s unfamiliar constellations and brilliant stars enhance the sense of being on another planet. Sculptural dunes have peculiar sands that sound like bull fiddles when jumping or sliding down them, canyons conceal desert elephant, oryx, baboons and lions that prey on fur seals. The amiable, mystical Himba people, living as they have for centuries, raise the question of what to wish for aboriginal peoples who’ve avoided many of the ills of Africa, yet often fare poorly in transitions to the world that’s leaping ahead. Another culture on borrowed time, but they’d view "Survivor" as a Three Stooges festival.

Wild dogs

Isandlwana Lodge, South Africa, KwaZulu Natal – Far to the east of the rift, several hours north of Durban, is a Mecca for military battle buffs. Isandlwana Lodge, built into cliffs overlooking the famed site of the gripping 1879 Anglo-Zulu battle that was like the British version of Custer’s Last Stand, an entire division wiped out. The exception was Rorke’s Drift, where about 100 Brit engineers battled 4,000 Zulus, generating more Victoria Crosses than any other battle. Before you go, see Michael Caine’s first movie, "Zulu," 1964, filmed there, and then go on battlefield lectures that give the moment to moment, make your hair stand on end as you comprehend the ritual of the dipping of the spears. Both points of view in this conflict are presented, with deep insights into African history. This region also has great drivable access to grand national and private game reserves, and to Sodwana Bay, the top South Africa dive site, with swirling hammerhead frenzies. www.isandlwana.co.za