Kruger National Park – A Self Drive Adventure

There aren’t actually many places that you can fly to from Namibia, so we found ourselves having to fly via Johannesburg which seemed like a great opportunity to stay in South Africa for a few days and visit Kruger National Park – the biggest Game Park in Africa.

The Southern gate, Malelane, is only a four-hour drive from Johannesburg airport where we picked up our rental car. If you follow our blog then you’ll know that we usually rent the cheapest car we can find but we’ve learnt something on this trip, which is that wildlife viewing is much better with a bit of height (especially at this time of year when the grass is long), and a bit of clearance doesn’t go amiss on the game park roads. So this time we opted for a Toyota Urban Cruiser – although we were going to give it a bit of test outside an Urban environment.

We spent the night in a small guesthouse near the town of Mbombela, about one-hour short of the park entrance and the next morning, after picking up some car snacks for our game drives, we drove the rest of the way to Malelane Gate where they explained that payment is taken at the rest camp. This is where our wild card purchase would prove its worth as Kruger costs R535 (that’s about £23) per person per day and we’d booked for five days.

For the first two nights we had arranged to stay at Lower Sabie Rest Camp, which is about 100km from Malelane Gate. Kruger has a good network of paved roads and this journey was paved for most of the way.

The first leg of the journey was to head to Skukuza Rest Camp, which is the biggest rest camp in the park and home to the park administration.

It wasn’t long before we saw our first Elephants right next to the road, as well as a number of Impala (which were to prove our most common sighting).

One of the things we liked about driving around Kruger was that everyone was really happy to share information about where they had seen various animals – not just other self-drivers like us, but also the paid guides.

We hadn’t been in the park very long when someone waved us down and told us that there was a leopard in a tree a few km’s up the road. We sped up and made our way there to where about 10 cars were parked up all looking at a tree about 20m off the road.

We arrived in the nick of time, as only a few minutes later the Leopard got up, climbed to a different branch of the tree to retrieve a half eaten Impala carcass, before descending with its lunch and slinking off into the bushes. We were off to a fantastic start!

The crowd quickly dispersed and we headed on up the road to Skukuza Rest Camp where we stopped at the Cattle Baron restaurant for lunch, which is in a beautiful spot overlooking the Sabie River.

There were a whole bunch of Monkeys at the rest camp but fortunately they didn’t seem to bother people at the restaurant.

After lunch we started our afternoon game drive towards Lower Sabie Camp. We hadn’t gone far when we had to take a diversion from the main road as a result of flooding in January which had washed out the road. The diversion wasn’t too rough though and we were soon back on track.

We took our time on the drive, which is partially along the Sabie River, and were rewarded with a rare sighting of a hungry Hippo out of the water during the day.

As usual, we ended up short on time and running late to get to the camp gate before closing, so we speed up and were making good time when we ran into a herd of Elephants walking down the middle of the road.

There was no way past and we had to sit and wait while they slowly wandered down the road, occasionally stepping off the road to make us think we had an opportunity to pass before stepping right back into the road again.

Eventually they moved off the road allowing us to pass and we hurriedly made our way to the gate, along with a couple of other cars – at least we all had the same excuse! We were 20 minutes late but in true African style there were no worries and we entered the camp without a problem.

We quickly checked in and were given the keys to our room. The hut we had booked was basic with no bathroom but the toilet/ shower block was only about 50m away. Fortunately there was air conditioning, although it was an incredibly old and noisy contraption and with the frequent power cuts it was off as much as it was on. However, as we were learning, when on safari you are out and about for most of the day and your room is really only for sleeping.

In the morning we were up early and headed South towards Crocodile Bridge camp and the Southern gate to the Park. We had a good morning game drive but the absolute highlight was seeing a Cheetah with a year old cub about 30m from the road. They were lazing around under the shade of a bush.

We spent some time watching them and were rewarded with the adult getting up and moving around before slumping back down in the shade. If there is something we have learnt about watching the big cats is that they do sleep a lot of the time but they are also quite restless and if you take a little time to observe them they will shift position from time to time.

For lunch we headed back to Lower Sabie and the Mugg & Bean restaurant overlooking the Sabie River. We’ve found the food in the rest camps at Kruger to be pretty decent and not bad value either.

We headed back out in the afternoon and had our first crocodile sighting, basking in the sunshine on rocks in the Sabie river. That afternoon was fairly uneventful, although we did see a good number of Elephants and when there aren’t that many bigger animals to see there are always an amazing variety of birds.

We had booked an official park game drive for the evening and were desperately hoping it would be better than the one we did in Etosha where we saw very little. This one started in the full dark and when we climbed onboard and the truck started up, we were pleased to find that it lit up like a Christmas tree with spotlights on both sides and two strong white spotting lights. This was much better than the single red spotlight we had in Etosha.

The game drive was two hours long and it felt like every couple of minutes the guide spotted something new. We started off seeing a lot of hippos, who come out of the river to forage at night. In fact we saw so many that the guide refused to stop after the first couple.

We also saw owls, chameleons, a snake in a tree, numerous small deer but the absolute highlight of the nights was coming across 2 lionesses walking down the road. They were patrolling their territory using the road as a convenient path. We followed them as they made their way along, at a fair pace, before having a five minute break to groom themselves and starting their patrol again.

The following day we were due to stay at Satara Camp, which about 100km North of Lower Sabie, so we set off early in the morning for our game drive towards Satara.

It was a long drive at safari pace but we arrived in time for a late lunch. We didn’t see a whole bunch of game on the way despite going slowly and keeping our eyes peeled, some days are just slower than others, but we did see our first Cape Buffalo – the last of the Big 5 for us (although the Rhino bums at night in Etosha did feel a bit inadequate).

However as we approached Satara we did see some Waterbuck, which were a new animal to us. They only live near water as they need to drink several times a day and they have a gland which secretes a musky oil onto their skin so they are not a popular prey animal for the big cats.

Satara is not on the water but it seemed a much busier camp than Lower Sabie. We had a bathroom in our room here and a small balcony which was nice although we had paid a little extra for this accommodation (almost twice as much but it was the cheapest accommodation available).

The restaurant at Satara was again very good and we settled down to a late lunch when we arrived.

On our afternoon game drive we saw a Lion walking along the road almost as soon as we started, although she soon headed off into the bushes. This is the first animal we’ve seen wearing a tracking collar.

We had a long game drive but didn’t manage to make the full loop we had planned to do before we had to turn around and make it back to camp for sunset.

Having done a night-time safari drive we wanted to also try a sunrise drive, which in practice meant getting up at a shockingly early 3.45am as we had to be at the departure point for 4.15am. I’m not going to lie, it was a struggle but it was well worth it as we had some incredible sightings.

This game drive was all about Lions – we came upon one group in the pre-dawn darkness who were relaxing on the roadside with a couple of skittish hyenas hanging around several metres away. This pride had a couple of playful young cubs who were jumping on the adults when they weren’t looking.

We drove on from this pride of Lions and as the sky brightened we came across another pride of 11 Lions that were also sitting on the road.

The Lions apparently like to sleep on the tarmac roads because they retain the heat of the day and are dry, unlike the dewy grass.

This pride was made up of lionesses, some older cubs and a couple of teenage male lions whose manes were just starting to grow in.

We stayed with these guys for quite a while until they started to wander off into the long grass.

That was a great game drive with 20 Lions as well as the usual assortment of Zebra, Giraffe and miscellaneous bambis !

We were pretty tired after our early start so we stayed in camp until after lunch when we headed back out. Unfortunately there is no pool at Satara so we couldn’t relax in quite the same fashion as at the other rest camps but it does have nice grounds to wander around in.

We had come to the end of our stay in Kruger but we were leaving by the Orpen Gate which is due West of Satara. So, with our binoculars at the ready we headed off on our final game drive.

The absolute highlight of this drive was coming across 3 Wild Dogs (or Painted Wolves as they are also known) who were using a raised area of the road as a lookout from where they were watching herds of Wildebeest and Zebra grazing. We watched as they cautiously approached a sole Wildebeest, however he had spotted them and bellowed loudly. Suddenly a number of Wildebeest appeared out of nowhere and once he had back-up he aggressively approached the dogs who eventually backed off. It was fascinating to watch this interaction.

This was a great end to our Kruger safari but we weren’t quite finished with South Africa. We had decided to follow the Panoramic Route back to Johannesburg which is a loop that goes through the Blyde River Canyon via a number of waterfalls and viewpoints.

Our first stop was actually in Blyde River Canyon itself but the viewpoint isn’t particularly spectacular and it was far too hot for a hike, so we drove all the way around to the far side of the canyon where we stopped off at the Three Rondavels viewpoint, which truly was spectacular.

Our next stop was at Bourke’s Luck Potholes (named after a gold prospector), which involved a short walk along a canyon and then over a bridge and back around to the start. It’s an attractive location although we felt a little overpriced.

However, there is a pretty waterfall and the canyon itself is worth seeing.

It had been a long day by this stage so we made our way to the town of Graskop where we had arranged our overnight accommodation. As this was our last proper night in South Africa we went out for dinner and I tried Warthog stew, as a local guide in Namibia had told me that this was his favourite game meat.

I must say I was a bit underwhelmed and wouldn’t rush to try it again.

The next morning we headed out early to Lisbon falls and then Berlin falls where there a viewpoints to see the cascades.

We also checked out a short hike to a rock mount called The Pinnacle.

We then returned to Graskop where we took the elevator down into Graskop gorge. There is a boardwalk around the bottom of the gorge with some very informative boards telling you about the fauna and flora of the area and if you want to splash a bit more cash they also have a zipline and bungee swing across the gorge.

Our final stop on the Panoramic Route was Mac Mac Falls, where a short trail leads to a caged-in viewpoint over the pretty waterfall.

Leaving Graskop and Mac Mac Falls behind us we had a three hour drive back to Johannesburg for our early morning flight to Tanzania the next day. That was the end of our amazing adventure in South Africa and Namibia but we still had a few more countries to explore in Africa before heading home.