Adventure Capital More than just the darling of Bono and the Bills, South Africa is breaking down barriers—from cosmopolitan Cape Town to the wild superparks of the future. IT'S THE DREAMLIKE, cinematic power of Africa unfolding yet again. This time, it's late afternoon when the leopard emerges from the bush, 20 feet away, crossing the sandy wash with a lazy stride, pelt rippling in the golden light. Then the radio crackles and we're fishtailing across the 54-square-mile Ngala Private Game Reserve, on Kruger National Park's western edge. Another cat's been spotted, and Jimmy Ndubane, our Shangaan tracker, leads us straight to it. This one is anything but lazy; seconds after we see the white tip of its tail twitching in the grass, the beast leaps forward and zigzags explosively through the meadow. We hear its prey, a mongoose, screaming and, finally, silence. It's awful, it's beautiful, it's what you came for: Africa forever.

After 16 years of civil war, Mozambique is back in the bliss business, with 1,500 miles of Indian Ocean coastline, thriving coral reefs . . . and peace at hand.

The sail flapped listlessly as we drifted in the sun's growing heat. We'd hired the 70-year-old fisherman to sail us in his wooden dhow across a channel from Ilha de Mo?ambique, a tiny speck off the northern coast, to a nearby isthmus of the mainland. Soon the wind did come, billowing the patched sails of nearby fishing dhows and winging them to sea. Beaching at a thatch village under coconut palms, we waded through tidal inlets to a spectacularly empty, several-mile-long curve of white beach. After snorkeling in the quiet shallows, avoiding enormous sea urchins, we hiked back to discover our dhow sprawled on its side on a sandy flat at least 500 yards from the water's edge.