Stranger In Africa: Kruger National Park

Kruger National Park doesn’t need much of an introduction; it is the most famous game park in Southern Africa if not the world. Established in 1926 as an amalgamation of two reserves that were set up in an effort to stop the uncontrolled hunting that had almost wiped out all the game in the area. With this in mind, the game that you see in the park is a result of a century of conservation. Whilst designed to protect wildlife the establishment of Kruger also resulted in the forced removal of people from their homes in various area.

The main surprise we had when planning our visit was to realise just how big Kruger is. It’s the size of a country on its own, apparently the size of Wales at 20,000 sq km. We entered the park at the most southern gate and drove through to exit out the top (415km i.e. before you include all the little side roads). We ended up staying 8 days, with a trip out of the park to go shopping in between and were lucky to exit before school holidays began.

Kruger is set in beautiful country. It was wonderful too to be forced to stay in campsites where there was a pool and a shop with cold beers for sale. Rachel also, just quietly, became a raging carnivore while we were in Kruger, it must be something about Game viewing and Game eating – no to be fair we didn’t eat any Game meat, it was really for the true South African experience of a braai in the bush after a good game drive.

A Giant Baobab

So down to business, it is all about your sightings in Kruger, so what did we see?

Did we see the Big 5 before 9am like the couple in the tent beside us were bragging… no, unfortunately it was not our lucky lion trip… we arrived at one campsite the day after 6 lions had brought down 2 buffalo 10 metres from the gate and roared all night as the couple in the caravan beside us were excitedly telling us….bloody sighting envy…you really can’t take these things too seriously! To be fair that caravan couple were very sweet, even left us a bottle of red beside our car while we were sleeping when they left.

We did manage to see the other Big Four (a leopard tail/foot counts right?!). However our best sightings were: Ground Hornbills; 4 Cheetah lazing in the sun eyeing off a Hyena; Hyena cub who was soooo cute and his mum; a large crèche of elephants including little babies walking right in front of us; swimming elephants; a pygmy kingfisher close from a bird hide; a couple of owls; a huge 300+ herd of buffalo crossing the road and lots of birds of prey! Here are some of our photos…