Kruger in South Africa is one of the world's greatest national parks. Photo: Martin Harvey/Getty Images
By Jenny Walker
There’s a snort in the bush and a troop of warthogs muscle their way out of the undergrowth just as a bee-eater in a fluster of iridescent feathers lands improbably on a twig. High above, a snake eagle momentarily clouds the sky, perhaps clocking the movement of a lone cheetah in the grasslands below. You sip iced tea, watching the dust kicked up by a herd of elephants moving as silently along the dry riverbed as their massive bulks allow. All this entertainment, and you haven’t left camp yet. This is South Africa's Kruger – a park so full of wonders you can’t help but be wrapped up in its magic.
Easy to reach, expertly managed and almost uniquely self-drivable, Kruger National Park is one of the world’s great destinations for wildlife viewing. All the Big Five – lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo and rhino – are present in the park, together with safari favorites impala, zebra, giraffe, hippos and crocs. The hardest part of the trip is booking accommodations (in tents, cabins or lodges at one of Kruger’s rest camps) at short notice in high season. Other than that, the whole park is designed to give safe, responsible and informed access to the widest contingent of people, regardless of budget, mobility or time.
Only have two days to spare? Go anyway! With a pair of binoculars, the Kruger National Park Map and one booked game drive, you’ll find Kruger whispers in your ear until you find a way to return for longer.
It's harder to spot wildlife in Kruger during the hot summer months, but you might be lucky and see newbown animals in the undergrowth. Photo: Hendri Venter/Getty Images
When should I go to Kruger National Park?
Kruger National Park is wonderful to visit at any time of year but arguably the dry winter months, from May to September, offer the best wildlife viewing. At this time, the bush dies back and trees shed their leaves making it easier to observe animals and birds gathered around the shrinking waterholes. Naturally, peak wildlife viewing also means peak visitor season with July and August being the two busiest months of the year.
The hot, rainy summer months, particularly December and January, mark another high season in the park, coinciding with local school holidays. While wildlife is harder to spot, and daytime temperatures are uncomfortably hot and humid, the park is at its prettiest with abundant newborn life hiding in the dense foliage. Booking several months ahead for any of Kruger’s camps is advisable during peak times.
How much time should I spend in Kruger?
Although Kruger rewards even the briefest of visits, the odds of spotting the highlights are improved the longer you remain in the park. For most people with a general interest in wildlife and keen to learn about the bush, five days makes a perfect introduction to the park. This gives a couple of days to focus on spotting the Big Five in and around the main camp of Skukuza, take a game drive and a guided bush walk to learn about the park’s extraordinary diversity, and explore a quieter camp, with a focus on antelope, further north. On a longer visit, dodge "spotters’ fatigue" by adding in a side trip along part of the Panorama Route outside the park, or include a luxury night or two in one of the private concessions or game reserves that neighbor Kruger.
Is it easy to get into Kruger?
The park is served by its own airport, Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport, a daily scheduled one-hour flight from Johannesburg. From here, it’s a 90-minute drive by hire car or taxi to the main rest camp, Skukuza. Taxis are also available from Hazyview, a gateway town well-served by public transport.
There are nine main gates into Kruger (and two 4WD-only access points bordering Mozambique). When working out which gateway to use, bear in mind strictly enforced park speed limits of 50km/h (30mph) on tarred roads, and hefty fines for late arrival at your chosen camp after sunset. Check the Kruger website for camp gate opening times, which change throughout the year.
Kruger's main gravel roads are accessible in a sedan hire-car, making budget self-drive exploration possible.
Photo: Getty Images
Is it easy to get around Kruger?
Once inside the park, all camps offer sunrise drives, three-hour sunset drives and two-hour night drives. Inside the perimeter fence of any of the park’s main camps it’s also possible to walk around the grounds even after dark. For a privileged view of Kruger, though, it’s hard to beat self-driving. Car hire is possible from Kruger’s airport and even the park’s main gravel roads (such as the renowned Sabie River Rd) are negotiable in a sedan car. The joy of self-driving is it allows you to watch a herd of impala for as long as you wish without being urged on by those hungry to spot lion, to pull up for a picnic in the bush at a designated site empty of all other vehicles and reach remote parts of the park just for the joy of exploring the park’s varied terrain.
Top things to do in Kruger
Go on a game drive
Agreed, it’s not wholly desirable getting up well before dawn at 3am when it’s bitterly cold for much of the year, and yes, your fellow passengers may have their idiosyncrasies, but with multiple eyes on the job, there’s no better way to spot the most wildlife in the least amount of time than on a game drive. The highly experienced driver-guides know exactly where the local lions are lounging and can make the spotting of waterbuck and mongooses as exciting as tracking rhino. Book trips through the central Kruger website or, in lower seasons, reserve a place on the daily three-hour dawn drive or two-hour sunset drive at any Kruger camp office.
Take a walk in the park
They look big from a car but on foot Kruger’s large herbivores assume mammoth proportions. Guided walks, organized from any of the camps, take up to three hours but the memory of being on the same probable path as an elephant, rhino or hippo is likely to last a lifetime. With your safety their first concern, park rangers help the visitor get under the leaf mold of the park to watch a whole world of interconnected wonders at work. Walks tend to leave visitors less obsessed with the Big Five and more fascinated with their tiny elusive namesakes – the antlion, leopard tortoise, elephant shrew, buffalo weaver and rhinoceros beetle.
Most camps in Kruger have a lookout over water so take a seat and let the wildlife come to you. Photo: Shutterstock
Be busy doing nothing
With two million hectares (20,000sq km/7722 sq miles) of wilderness, Kruger is dauntingly vast. Encompassing 20 distinct ecozones ranging from the drier north with its fever trees and baobabs, the dense mopani thickets and open savannah of central Kruger, and a lush riverine vegetation in the south, the park would take a lifetime to know in depth. Rather than driving in vain to "see it all," spend a day letting Kruger’s residents come to you. Each camp generally has a superb lookout across a riverbed, reservoir or waterhole and shaded grounds that attract a multitude of non-bipedal visitors in the heat of the afternoon. The longer you wait for nothing to happen, the more you’ll notice what really goes on while your fellow human beings are rushing from A to B – a troop of mongooses filing past the restaurant, an elegantly socked nyala browsing behind the pool, or a thieving baboon sitting at your doorstep. Learning about your four-, six- and eight-legged neighbors is a highlight of camp life.
Brave the night
Kruger at night is not the Kruger of day. It’s raw and real and belongs to a whole other world of animals that venture out in moonlight or lurk in the shadows hoping not to be seen. No one is allowed into this other world unless they are part of a guided night drive. A startled elephant trumpets louder at night, the spots of a leopard loom larger, and mosquitos draw blood at each pause in the path. Coming back smaller is the best education that a night drive can give.
Lounge in luxury
The wholesome life of a Kruger camp with its early mornings, hearty breakfasts, hikes and early nights is rejuvenating but after a few days there’s a certain hankering after a soft bed, hot bath and a slice of something naughty. Booking in for a night or two of luxury in a Sabie Sands lodge, or at any of the private concessions or game reserves that adjoin Kruger Park, offers glamping at its finest and the chance to deepen your knowledge of the bush from the expert trackers that each lodge employs. Prices tend to be high but the all-inclusive itineraries, private game drives tailored to your interests and generally delicious home-cooked fare represent value for money. And let’s face it, there’s no putting a price on the tea delivered to your tent flap before dawn or the sundowner with hippos.
Bring a bird guide and binoculars with you to best appreciate Kruger's varied birdlife. Henk Bogaard/Shutterstock
My favorite thing to do in Kruger
It’s early December and so hot the road is rising in ribbons on either side of the Tropic of Capricorn that bisects a route through the park, north of Mopani Camp. A herd of zebra are parked up under the umbrella thorn and even the glades of long grass that are a feature of this part of the park have yellowed under the tropical assault of the sun. It’s almost too hot for humans but somehow it’s never too hot to birdwatch. And there, dancing on the gridlines of the map, over-dressed and bald-headed under the sun, is a male ostrich – the world’s biggest bird – with his family of smaller non-fliers hopping and pecking to the rear. Nearby the patterned leaf matter of the ground resolves into the feathers of a stalking kori bustard – the world's heaviest flying bird – while overhead the martial eagle, Africa’s biggest eagle, aims for the sun and spirals back to earth in a swoon. Throw in the saddle-billed stork – the world’s tallest – and you’ve identified a birder's Big Four.
Read the original article on Lonely Planet.
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