It takes an elephant to get my teenage son up early

Having just turned 13, my boy Ferdy doesn’t really do early mornings. Indeed, during the summer hols we rarely glimpsed him before noon and then only fleetingly whenever he chose to assemble himself a triple-decker jam and Nutella sandwich and flee back upstairs to his darkened room and repeats of Top Gear on his iPad.

I saw more of our neighbours’ kids than I did of our own. But there Ferdy was at 5.30 a.m., bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and raring to go. ‘Come on, daddy, for heaven’s sake shake a leg, everyone’s waiting!’ I hardly recognised the boy.

We were staying at Phinda Forest Lodge in KwaZulu-Natal, south-east of Johannesburg, for three days’ safari and some father-and-son bonding, and it was time for the first early-morning game drive.

Phinda Private Game Reserve encompasses an impressive 23,000 hectares of prime wilderness, and Forest Lodge — one of six on the reserve — is in the middle of nowhere. It comprises a dozen or so wooden suites set deep in a forest of towering torchwood trees. The suites are reassuringly swish, each with its own veranda, double bedroom, shower, bath, air con, telephone and commendably well-stocked minibar. The only reason we had to double-lock our door was to keep out the thieving and increasingly ingenious local monkeys.

In the heart of the camp there was an infinity pool, a boma, a viewing deck and a wooden dining and sitting area open on all sides so that the jungle seemed on the point of swallowing it up whole. It was all delightfully rustic but chic and stylish too — a sort of Zulu zen retreat — and Ferdy and I were both entranced.

A quick cup of tea and a snack and it was off on our first dawn run into the bush.