Kruger national park, south africa
As the preeminent national park to go on safari, Kruger is the experience that you need to have. There are many ways to make this experience happen, from self driven safari to high end lodges and guided safaris. We chose to self drive and stay at 2 different lodges by 2 different gates. That way we would see different trails, in theory seeing different animals. That was theoretical and probably was not at all reality as the animals are wild and free to move wherever they want in the park. Considering you are not seeing animals all of the time, it was a good plan because we saw different scenery when we were not seeing animals.
Kruger is a huge park, nearly the size and shape of the state of New Hampshire. About half of the roads are paved and the other half are dirt roads. The speed limits even on the paved roads is about 35 mph as you have to be careful of animals popping in front of your car. Also, you are always watching for interesting animals to view so you really don't want to drive too fast. So, even with a full day of driving (6-8 hours), you will likely only cover 100-120 miles, taking into account stopping regularly for picture opportunities and general animal viewing. In our 4 days, we covered about the lower quarter of the park, which we thought was pretty good.
We had been told that the lower part of the park was the most animal populated area. We had 2 really good viewing days and 2 not so good viewing days. And it seems that it is totally out of your own control. So you just have to drive and hope you see a lot of interesting animals. That is, of course,if you do the self drive. SInce that was our experience, that is all I can really speak about. One small tip was that you could occaisionally tell if a guided truck was on their way to see something interesting. If you see that, you should follow them for awhile to see where they are going.They are all on radios to each other so they have a distinct advantage over self driving. But being a bit of a control freak and also having a tendency towards motion sickness, self driving was my only realistic option.
I have some more good pics from day 3 and 4 to post after I have finished this post. The variety of animals that we saw in our 4 days made the side trip very worthwhile. And we did not see cheetahs, leopards or hyeneas. A bit disappointing but our group of female lions the first day was really an awesome way to begin our safari experience! We drove from Joberg to Kruger, which was a 5-6 hour drive. At times, I wished we had flown there as the drive was long and not too interesting at first. But the last 2 hours the scenery was beautiful and leaving, we stopped in the mountains for a few scenic views as well as a cute little town called Graskop. We stopped in a couple of shops there. I would recommend a day in this area to the west of the park for a change of pace from going on safari. Have a great day!!
