By Greg Barrow, in the Sabie Sands Game Reserve

Have you ever wanted to go on a big game safari? For those who are unable to make the journey, there is now the opportunity of experiencing a "virtual safari", via the internet.

In a pioneering project in South Africa, virtual game rangers have developed the technology to film wildlife and download the images onto a website. You need only log onto the site in your own home to experience the thrill of spotting rare animals in the wild.

When I went on safari at the Sabie Sands Game Reserve, I listened to an astonishing evening chorus of insects and animals after nightfall.

This is the true wilderness, a world away from what most people could even dream of experiencing.

However, it was a groundbreaking piece of technology which was bringing the African bush to me via the internet.

This concept is simple: A virtual game-ranger films wild animals in the bush and then the images are captured by a state-of-the-art mobile telephone. They are then sent by radio signal to a base-camp where they are downloaded onto the internet.

Jurie Moolman is one of the fathers of the Africam project. "Reality is mostly nothing, and then something exciting happens, and that is what we at Africam appeal to in terms of our audience," he says.

"Most of the time, there's nothing in front of the cameras, but there is this potential, this anticipation of these animals that we've known since childhood: Elephants, lions, leopards, that they can, and they do, appear in front of the cameras, and I think that that's the special appeal of Africam."

A safari vehicle loaded with tourists departs on an evening game drive and on board is a virtual game ranger with a video camera at the ready.

In a muddy watering hole, a young male hippo raises his head, snorts and disappears. He does not know it, but his picture has already hit the internet.

The Africam website is so popular, it gets almost 2,000,000 hits a day. Among those logging on are tourists like Peter Acutt, a South African now living in the United States.

"When we were pining for home, we found the Africam website on the internet, and it was magic because when it's freezing cold in Illinois, -20C, the lake frozen over, we can link back to the southern hemisphere, to Africa, to the bush.

"That bizarre technology has been a boon to us as a family. It's given us a little bit of our sanity back."

Peter came back to South Africa to visit the animals he had seen on the internet. Joining him on this adventure holiday was his neighbour, Rick Mazzotti who is another Africam devotee.

"First time I logged on, I found a hyena, and I thought 'Is this what I'm going to run into?' and 'What do I do when I run into a hyena'. So I said 'Peter, what's going to happen?' He said, 'Don't worry about it, everything's going to be okay.'

"So from an American, a person who's never really been on a safari, we didn't really know what to expect."

Thankfully, Rick did not actually run into a hyena, but he did manage to see one from the safety of the safari truck. Of course the thrill of actually being out on a real safari, says Jurie Moolman, will never be overtaken by images on your personal computer.

"When you sit in an open vehicle, and there's a lion five, 10 metres away from you, and he stares at you in that deadpan way, and you know that there's only five, 10 metres between your flesh, and his flesh, it's an experience which virtual reality will never be able to give us," he concedes.

"It's an experience that just allows us as arrogant humans to remember that in some contexts, we're just food."