Kruger National Park



Kruger Park was founded by Paul Kruger, the president of South Africa, in 1898 as a place where the wild life of the African Lowveld area could be protected.

The park is 352 kilometers from top to bottom and 80 km wide. These 2 million hectares make it the largest wildlife preserve in South Africa and the world.

The southern part of Kruger Park, located in Mpumalunga Province is very low in elevation and the climate there is almost subtropical. The northern part of the park is higher and drier and is located in Limpopo Province. The northern part of Kruger borders Mozambique and Zimbabwe and the three countries have formed a large
Transfrontier conservation area which includes parts of all three with no fences.

About 40 km from the Numbi gate a new airport has been built, Kruger-Mpumalunga International. There are flights to Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban from this facility, which replaces the former airport at Skukuzu, now closed. One may also fly from Johannesburg to Phalaborwa or Nelspruit and rent a car to go into the Kruger Park. From Pilgrim’s Rest it is an 80 km drive to Kruger. The gates to the park close at 5:30 pm so please allow enough time to reach your destination from these areas outside the park.

Kruger Park contains the largest concentration of mammals in the world. There are
about 1500 leopards, 250 cheetahs, 8500 elephants, 300 black rhinos, 20,000 buffalo, 2000 lions, 350 wild dogs, 4000 giraffe, 13,000 wildebeest, 300 white rhinos 100,000 impala, 200 sable antelope, 30,000 zebra and over 500 species of birds, as well as
many smaller mammals.

The park has several different ecosystems with a lot of small rivers (often dry) and pools
supporting an unbelievable number of different kinds of plants and trees. There are small mountains, forests, and savannahs.

The subtropical climate in the south of the park means that there should be a lot of rain, but the last few years have been very dry. The rainy season is from late September through February with temperatures as warm as 40° C/104° F in the day time and very warm humid nights as well. In the wintertime, it’s very nice with about 25°C/78°F during the day and cold nights, sometimes as low as 1°C/34

All through Kruger Park there are paved main roads, but also lots of gravel roads and an occasional river bed to cross—wet or dry. A good sedan can manage, but a higher car is better, not only for the driving, but so one can see over the tall grass along the edges of the road and not miss seeing the animals there.

There are many fenced camps within the park where you can eat and sleep in rondavels and tents. The rondavels have air-conditioning and tents have fans which you will need for the heat in summer (October-April).
All accommodations have a fridge and a braai/barbecue and there are also outside communal kitchens and wash-up areas.

Most camps have a shop, a restaurant, a take a way snack bar and a gas station.
When you need car repair you must go or phone Letaba, Satara or Skukuza Camps.
There are also private camps deep in the bush which may be reserved for camping trips.
In these camps there are no shops, restaurants, take a ways, or petrol stations.
There are also many unfenced picnic areas where you are allowed to get out of your car at your own risk. These often have snack bars and the rest rooms are very clean and well cared for. There are facilities for grilling, but many of the South African visitors bring their own portable grills, called skotelbraais, on which they cook their meats.

Important camps in the northern part of Kruger Park are Punda Maria and Shingwedzi.
Because it’s so far to these camps, there are not many tourists in that area and spotting the animals is often difficult because there is so much vegetation. Bird watching is excellent up there however.

In the central section of the park the camps are Satara, Olifants and Letaba. We like Satara because it is near the S100 road where one can find a lot of animals, even sometimes lions!
Letaba has an Elephant Museum where the big tusks from famous elephants are exhibited. Letaba is situated above a river, which can be very low or in flood, depending on the amount of rain, and from the restaurant there is a great view over the river, in which one sees many birds and an occasional elephant. There are some nearly tame bushbok inside Letaba, making for good photo opportunities.
Olifants is on a mountain from which there is a beautiful view over the Olifants River where one can see and hear the hippos and watch the elephants crossing.
It’s wonderful to sit in front of your hut at night and listen to the sounds of the bush and the river. You can hear grasshoppers, frogs, hippos and sometimes the roar of a lion.

In the southern part of Kruger Park, the camps are Skukuza, Lower Sabie, Pretoriuskop, Berg en Dal, and Crocodile Bridge. Skukuza is the main camp for the park and there is a bank and also a doctor there. It’s also the busiest camp because a lot of people come there for day trips or just for the weekend. Lower Sabie is situated beside the river and there is a good game in this area. The huts are small and have no kitchen, but there is a braai/BBQ. Lower Sabie was rebuilt in 2003 and then again in 2004 following a disastrous fire. It has a nice restaurant with big decks overlooking the river where one can have a very pleasant meal. Lower Sabie is a nice place with a lot of animals and the beautiful Sunset Dam, located just outside the gates to the camp. Berg en Dal, a more upscale camp, is in an area with small mountains where there are many elephants to spot.
Sometimes its difficult to see the animals because of the many small groves of trees.

From November through January, the camp gates are open from 04:30 am till 06:30 pm.
From Februay through April, from 05:30 am till 06:00 pm.
From April through Oktober, from 06:00 am till 06:00 pm.
In Kruger Park the speed limit is 50 km/h on the paved roads and 40 km/h on the gravel roads. With many stops for seeing game and taking photographs, the average speed is only about 15 km/h so you can drive about 200km a day.

If you are lucky you will see the big five on one day: lion, elephant,rhino, buffalo and leopard.
There are also night drives offered by the camps that must be reserved in advance.
These are in a big truck holding about 20 persons with a knowledgeable guide/driver.
It’s exciting to go into the bush and see some night animals such as lions, owls and snakes.
We like to take early morning drives requiring us to get up very early in order to leave the camp at 04:30 am to see the beautiful African sunrise.
Some of the camps also offer two hour bushwalks. These are done with a small group of about eight, with two rangers, and go into the bush outside the camp. You learn about plants and their uses and hopefully see game, such as lions or rhinos too. It’s a very special feeling to stand only a few meters/yards from a lion.

And now please take a look at our photo’s from Kruger Park. We hope you enjoy them and will sign our guest book, found on the links page.

Herma & Ton