Safari in Kruger

the best lodges are in private reserves

Kruger National Park is located in the northeast of South Africa.

Kruger is the largest and best known wildlife reserve in Southern Africa, an absolutely enormous tract of land which runs for 350 km along the borders of Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

It’s a fabulous wilderness, with intense wildlife in many areas and an enormous range of accommodation facilities from simple bush camps to extremely chic high-end lodges.

However Kruger is a very busy place, with over a million visitors each year. The safari experience inside the main park is often shockingly poor, with self-drive sedan vehicles convoying along sealed main roads between enormous institutional rest-camps.

Almost all of the best lodges are in private reserves, where the quality of the safari experience is much higher than that inside the main park. The range of prices here is truly extraordinary, these reserves contain both some of the highest and some of the lowest cost lodges on the continent.

Kruger is perhaps best known for providing the easiest and most comfortable safari in Africa, a fact which is encapsulated by the widely used expression ‘big five before breakfast’. If you don’t want to work too hard for your wildlife, this is the place to come.

The best time to visit Kruger is generally considered to be the May-Oct dry season, but (surprisingly) the reserve remains popular year round.

Safari in the Kruger area is much more seasonal than most people would lead you to believe. Trip planning is complicated by the fact that the seasons here are almost diametrically opposite to those down in Cape Town (with which the area is most commonly combined in trips).

Dry winter : Jun/Sep

This period is characterised by a cool dry winter which is generally considered to be the best time for wildlife viewing, although day length is relatively short and nights can get very cold. Unfortunately it does coincide with a more conventional cool wet winter in Cape Town.

Hot transition : Oct/Nov

This is the start of the hot wet summer. Wildlife viewing is usually very strong, but temperatures and humidities can become uncomfortably high in advance of the first rains, which usually arrive mid November to cool things down. This coincides with a usually pleasant spring season in Cape Town. October therefore represents an interesting compromise month.

Wet summer : Dec/Mar

This period is characterised by a hot wet summer, which is generally considered to be the most challenging time for wildlife viewing, although sightings should remain reliable in the premium areas. Day length is nice and long, but temperatures and humidities can become uncomfortably high and rain can be a major issue. However these potentially adverse conditions happen to coincide with a hot dry summer in Cape Town.

Cool transition : Apr/May

This is a period of transition between the hot wet summer and the cool dry winter, with wildlife viewing continuing to improve as the foliage dies back. Day length, temperatures and humidities are all in the middle of their ranges. The period coincides with autumn/fall in Cape Town, making this perhaps the strongest time of year for the combination.

Getting around

The majority of visitors to Kruger arrive by light aircraft. Usually it features at the front end of a trip, with guests flying into Johannesburg and connecting onto light aircraft flights direct into the bush airstrips.

Sometimes guests fly into nearby airports, like Nelspruit or Hoedspruit, from where it is a road transfer of 1-3 hours into the wildlife areas and the first lodge.

A relatively low proportion of our guests visit the Kruger area by self-drive, usually flying into one of the airports at Nelspruit or Hoedspruit, picking up a vehicle, heading perhaps to accommodation in the Panorama area first, then navigating a route around two, three or four stops in Kruger.

Where to stay

Most visitors to Kruger National Park fly in and stay at just one lodge for 3-4 nights, but generally prefer to recommend a combination of two lodges over 5-8 nights. Longer and more comprehensive safaris are also very much possible, especially in self-drive trips.

The national park and its associated private reserves contain in excess of 100 places to stay, ranging from some very large and offensive restcamps to some incredibly pricey small camps.

usually best to combine two or three lodges