KRUGER PARK

The world-renowned Kruger National Park offers a wildlife experience that ranks with the best in Africa. Established in 1898 to protect the wildlife of the South African Lowveld, this national park of nearly 2 million hectares, SANParks - Kruger National Park is unrivaled in the diversity of its life forms and a world leader in advanced environmental management techniques and policies.

It is truly the flagship of the South African national parks and Kruger is home to an impressive number of species: 336 trees, 49 fish, 34 amphibians, 114 reptiles, 507 birds and 147 mammals. Man’s interaction with the Lowveld environment over many centuries - from bushman rock paintings to majestic archaeological sites like Masorini and Thulamela - is very evident in the Kruger National Park. These treasures represent the cultures, persons and events that played a role in the history of the Kruger National Park and are conserved along with the park’s natural assets.

The infrastructure of roads, waterholes, hides, picnic sites and rest camps are spread throughout the park to ensure the visitor maximum exposure to the fauna and flora and close-up encounters with animals that this remarkable reserve offers.

A large variety of safe accommodation is available in restcamps, bush lodges and bush camps which are fenced and closed at night. Ranging from from huts and bungalows to upmarket guest houses and guest cottages. All accommodation units are serviced daily and bedding, towels and soap are provided. Most of the units have either air-conditioning or fans. There are also a number of luxury private Game lodges in the park.

All the major camps have electricity, a first-aid centre, a shop, barbecue and communal kitchen facilities, a laundromat/laundry tubs, a restaurant and/or self-service cafeteria, public telephones and a petrol station. Radio and television are not provided in the park, however visitors who bring their own may not disturb other visitors. Skukuza Restcamp has a resident doctor, post office and banking facilities.

The Kruger Park is home to a very high concentration of the BIG FIVE and South Africa is very fortunate to have the largest variety of animals in the world.

The Kruger Park falls within a malaria infected area and the necessary precautions have to be taken. Please consult your doctor/chemist.

The climate is subtropical with hot summers and warm, dry winters. Summer rains fall between October and March.
Average Temperatures:
Spring (Sept - Nov): Daily Max 30°C; Daily Min 16°C
Summer (Dec - Feb): Daily Max 32°C; Daily Min 20°C
Autumn (March - May): Daily Max 29°C; Daily Min 16°C
Winter (June - Aug): Daily Max 26°C; Daily Min 9°C

KRUGER NATIONAL PARK
Join a South African Open Vehicle Safari into the world renowned Kruger National Park on either an overnight safari experience or a day safari, which will give you opportunities to see the
Big 5 and experience the natural wonders of this magnificent game reserve.

Lying in the heart of the Lowveld is a wildlife sanctuary like no other, its atmosphere so unique that it allows those who enter its vastness to immerse themselves in the unpredictability and endless wilderness that is the true quality of Africa.

The largest game reserve in South Africa, the Kruger National Park is larger than Israel. Nearly 2 million hectares of land that stretch for 352 kilometres from north to south along the Mozambique border, is given over to an almost indescribable wildlife experience. Certainly it ranks with the best in Africa and is the flagship of the country’s national parks - rated as the ultimate safari experience. The Kruger National Park lies across the provinces of Mpumalanga and Limpopo in the north of South Africa, just south of Zimbabwe and west of Mozambique. It now forms part of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park - a peace park that links Kruger National Park with game parks in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, and fences are already coming down to allow game to freely roam in much the way it would have in the time before man’s intervention. When complete, the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Park will extend across 35 000 square kilometres, 58% of it South African, 24% Mozambican and 18% Zimbabwean territory.

This is the land of baobabs, fever trees, knob thorns, marula and mopane trees underneath which lurk the Big Five, the Little Five (buffalo weaver, elephant shrew, leopard tortoise, ant lion and rhino beetle), the birding Big Six (ground hornbill, kori bustard, lappet-faced vulture, martial eagle, pel’s fishing owl and saddle-bill stork) and more species of mammals than any other African Game Reserve.

The Kruger Park is a self-drive destination, although there are guided tour operators, with an excellent infrastructure that includes picnic sites, rest camps, waterholes and hides. The Kruger Park is a remarkable reserve offering an incredible experience of Africa at its most wild. Very broadly speaking, the Kruger National Park is flat with a few gentle hills.

Four regions make it easier for you to select the type of experience you want from your time in the Kruger National Park.

The central region
Encompassing only 30% of the Kruger Park’s surface area, the central region supports nearly half the park’s lion population as well as numbers of leopard, hyena and cheetah. Possibly the main reason for this is the quantity of sweet grasses and abundant browsing trees found in this area that support a large group of antelope, giraffe, buffalo, zebra and wildebeest. But this does mean that it’s a popular region amongst tourists, and subsequently there are a number of camps in this region.

The far north region
This is a rather fascinating part of the Kruger National Park, not least because the ecozones here are noticeably different from other habitats in the Kruger. Sightings of rare birdlife and major areas of sand formed by river flood plains, combined with sandstone formations of the Mozambique coastal plain, make it attractive to visitors. There are also a number of tropical aspects as part of the region lies in a rain shadow and along the banks of the Luvuvhu River is a series of riverine forest. A picnic site on the river bank provides hours of splendid bird viewing.

What you can witness in this part of the Kruger National Park is extraordinary - the knocking sand frog, a collection of bats, the nocturnal bushpig and the rare Sharpe’s grysbok. There are samango monkeys, packs of endangered wild dog, and the major water pans across the Wambiya sandveld are a good place to sight tropical warm-water fish, such as the rainbow killifish, not found anywhere else in South Africa. The sandstone hills, just west of Punda Maria, is the only place where you can see the Natal red hare and yellow-spotted rock dassie, or hyrax. What makes a visit to this remote part of the Kruger park so meaningful is the solitude.

The northern region
North of the Orange River is a semi-arid region covering 7 000 square kilometres that sees very little rain. Vegetation here changes very little from the unvarying shrub, Mopane, which thrives in hot, low-lying valleys. However, across this great expanse of hot dryness, five rivers forge their way, providing narrow corridors along whose banks grow trees distinctly different from the Mopane - the Nyala, the Sycamore Fig, the Tamboti and the Tall Apple Leaf. The Letaba and Olifants rivers contain as much as 60% of the Kruger park’s hippo population, and bird life here abounds. There are plenty of bushpig in the undergrowth of the Luvuvhu River and on most of the river banks you can hope to see sizeable herds of elephant (the Kruger National park’s latest estimate is as many as 9000 of these beautiful beasts), buffalo, bushbuck, impala and kudu concentrated near a water supply.

The southern region
Bounded by the Crocodile River in the south and the Sabie River in the north, the southern region is also host to the jagged ridge of the Lebombo Mountains along the border with Mozambique, and the highest point in the park, Khandzalive, in the southwestern corner - almost in counterpoint to Pretoriuskop that lies in the west of the southern region of the Kruger National Park.The valleys are home to trees rarely found in other parts of the Kruger park, such as the Cape Chestnut, Coral Tree and Lavender Fever-berry; and granite lies beneath most of the region, producing distinctive smoothed koppies at irregular intervals, which are typically surrounded by rock figs and form ideal locations for rock dassies or hyrax, baboon and klipspringer, not to mention the odd leopard.

This is the region where you’re almost sure of seeing a white rhino as most of them occur here, particularly around Pretoriuskop, Mbyamiti River and south of lower Sabie. On the whole, there is more game purported to exist in the southern part of the park, so if you don’t make it to the northern reaches of the Kruger National Park , you won’t miss out. This part of the Kruger park is to some extent shrouded in history. Around Pretoriuskop, known for its profusion of trees, is Ship Mountain, its hull-shape the site of an old wagon trail that crosses a stream marking the birthplace of Jock of the Bushveld. The combretum woodlands, also part of this region, attract reasonable herds of kudu, impala, giraffe, buffalo, zebra, white rhino and elephant, and the scarcity of lion in this part of the park, makes way for the cheetah and wild dog.

Game drives
This is what the Kruger National Park is all about. For those booked on a safari or into a private game lodge, regular game drives with an experienced ranger are part and parcel of your trip, and for those on self-drives through the Kruger National Park, Olifants, Mopani and Letaba restcamps provide night drives, whilst most of the restcamps offer early morning, mid-morning and sunset game drives. For the most part game drives last around 3 hours, and private lodges and game farms usually include a coffee break, breakfast or sundowners in the bush as part of the game drive experience.

Bush walks
Nothing can possibly beat the heart stopping excitement of tracking rhino, elephant and lion on foot through the heat of the bush. But it’s also one of the most incredible ways to learn about the fragility of the ecosystems of the Kruger Park and to see the smaller, but in no way less exciting, animals and insects of the park like termites, spiders, snakes and plants that tend to be ignored when on the more fast paced game drives. Bush walks can last up to four hours and stops are made to allow replenishment and a chance to take in the beauty of an area. In the Kruger Park it’s advisable to take your own snacks and sunscreen and most of the camps do morning and afternoon walks.

Foot safaris
Time spent on foot in a Wilderness area is the very embodiment of a memorable safari experience. This experience can be appreciated at Mohlabetsi Safari Lodge.

Wilderness trails
There are a few incredible wilderness trails in the Kruger National Park, some in areas virtually untouched by humans, with names like Metsi-Metsi, Napi, Massingir and the Sweni Wilderness. Most of these trails are about 2 days with 3 overnights in rustic huts with basic ablution in reed-walled showers and flush toilets, but on the whole, they’re in such demand that they’re booked out way in advance. These are aimed at smaller groups than bush walks and one needs to have a reasonable level of fitness as one averages 20 kilometres a day, although this is at a leisurely pace.

The Lebombo overland trail
This incredible five-day ‘wilderness experience on wheels’ takes you from Crocodile Bridge to Pafuri, and deserves a mention here. It’s an eco trail that takes you along the eastern boundary of the Kruger National Park along the Lebombo hills (hence the name) from the extreme south to the farthest northern edge. A maximum of five vehicles, with four people in each – so as not to affect the environment adversely, undertakes the trail that covers 500 kilometres. It’s a self-drive eco trail – you man your own vehicle and cater for yourself – that crosses magnificent rivers and encompasses some of the most beautiful scenery in the park – wide, open spaces, bushveld and magnificent trees at their best. The trail overnights at Lower Sabie, Olifants and Shingwedzi restcamps. Experienced and professional guides will lead the trail and interpret the different eco zones and explain the terrain on this trail, rated as the best in southern Africa purely because of the rich diversity of fauna and flora en route.