We take the mohair route from Port Elizabeth to Graaff-Reinet, following an army of poker-red aloes which march across the rolling hills like redcoats.
The road winds through the Noorsveld - an area named after the spiky euphorbia once browsed by rhinos in the Eastern Cape. Crossing the Melk River, we turn on to the old wapad, the forgotten wagon road which runs through the fabled plains of Camdeboo. We finally reach the gates of Samara Game Reserve, a new luxury lodge and cheetah sanctuary.
On a clear day you can see all the way to Coxcomb peak 300km distant, all the way across the endless plains of Camdeboo to the coast.
Standing atop Eagle Rock, the views of red Karoo koppies, shimmering green valleys and jagged purple mountain peaks are breathtaking. We listen to the wildebeest snort and watch eland and zebra graze on sweet grass under a big blue sky.
"Imagine how the Bushmen felt, crouched on this rock, watching the annual migration of tens of thousands of springbok," exclaims Sarah Tompkins, one of the owners of Samara Private Game Reserve. When the last great springbok migration passed this way in the mid-1890s, they say it took a fortnight for the dust cloud kicked up by their hooves to settle after a 10km-long herd pronked through the countryside.
Only the chime of wind pumps and the whistling wind disturb the pristine silence of the Karoo. Samara is taking down the fences, rehabilitating the land and bringing the wildlife back to the Cape frontier.
Over the past decade, the Tompkin family has acquired 11 farms and restocked the plains with a Noah's Ark of the game which once roamed freely in the Eastern Cape. The enormous 28 000 hectare reserve has evolved into one of the biggest private conservation projects in South Africa.
Sarah points out the eland grazing among the rehabilitated spekboom, a key Karoo plant which absorbs carbon and helps the fight against global warming.
She explains, "Saving species from extinction is all about preserving the habitat and global bio-diversity. The Karoo is a fragile eco-system after the over-grazing of goats and cattle for the past 200 years."
She dreams of a migration corridor linking the national parks of Addo, Camdeboo and Cradock's Mountain Zebra with private reserves like Samara.
Sarah talks about the four South African biomes which make up the diverse habitat of Samara, the Karoo escarpment (grassland), Nama Karoo (bushland), riverine thicket and savannah.
On game drives and walks over the next two days, we track spores and learn to recognise the "eco-tones", nature's boundaries where the four biospheres merge into a new habitat.
We identify the signature trees of the Karoo, the bleached white trunks of shady 500-year-old shepherd trees, the stubby boerboon and the thorny Acacia karoo.
We drive past majestic natural landmarks - Aapieskloof, where the bark of baboons rings through the fresh mountain air, Aasvoelsberg (vulture mountain), Eselberg, and Wolwekloof.
Out on the vast plains of Camdeboo, we spot springbok aplenty, eland, kudu, red hartebeest, gemsbok, reedbuck, duiker, Cape Mountain and Burchell's zebra, giraffe, wildebeest, vervet monkeys and a shy pair of white rhino.
Samara is a bird-watcher's paradise. Les Slabbert, the experienced game ranger, has the eyes of an eagle.
At Paardekraal Dam we spot flamingos, a huge pair of kori bustards (you'll find an old recipe for pot-roasted gompou in Eve Palmer's The Plains of Camdeboo), a flock of 60 blue cranes ("one of their last strongholds", records Palmer), handsome secretary birds, fiscal flycatchers and brownhooded kingfishers.
One night, we jump into the Landrover with a wildly excited ranger who spotted an aardvark on the way to dinner. A nocturnal antbear digging in the dirt, excavating a termite mound, is a rare sight.
At night we dine under the stars on fine Karoo cuisine in a boma lit by blazing braziers - or in the elegant colonial dining room at Samara's Karoo Lodge, a heritage homestead with a wraparound stoep made for genteel high teas. The Milky Way seems close enough to touch.
Serenaded by jackals, we fall asleep in a four-poster bed beneath a rietdak ceiling in one of Samara's luxurious Karoo cottages.
The cuisine at Samara is pure Karoo. Chef Quinton van Rensburg, son of the postmaster of Graaff-Reinet, trained at the Culinary Academy and Cabriere in Franschhoek before coming home. His kitchen creates a fine dining menu of lentil soup served in a tin camp mug to warm your hands, blue agave sorbet (made from the local tequila distillery), venison meatball curry and rack of Karoo lamb, with goat's cheese from Nieu Bethesda, a memorable carrot cake and olive quiche for high tea.
The cheetah is the symbol of Samara, a sanctuary for the fastest cats in Africa.
In partnership with the De Wildt Cheetah and Wildlife Trust, Samara has released free-range cheetah into the reserve. Sibella, a female cheetah cruelly abused in captivity, is the star of Samara. After life-saving surgery, the rehabilitated cat started a new life at Samara in 2003 and has reared three litters of 16 cubs over the past five years.
Tracking the cheetahs on foot is the highlight of our visit. Waving a TV antenna in the air, the ranger locates Sibella and her five cubs via the enthralling beep-beep of the signal from her radio collar. We walk single file up a rocky hill.
Les softly sweet-talks Sibella, "Hi sweetie, come girl."
The slinky cat and her cubs appear, playing in the long grass, staring inquisitively at the intruders.
Walking with cheetahs at Samara is a moment of magic. They vanish into a blood-red Karoo sunset and are gone.