Kruger National Park
Into the park
Phabeni Gate, the most convenient entrance to the Kruger National Park, is 17 km from your villa, around twenty minutes by road. Drives run in the morning, in the afternoon and after dark, shared or private, for half a day or a full one. All of them are arranged through guides we know and use ourselves, and rates are available on request.
The park
Nearly two million hectares
Kruger runs almost the length of South Africa’s eastern border, and the southern section you enter at Phabeni is the richest of all of it, with the highest densities of lion, leopard, rhino and buffalo in the park and elephant almost everywhere you look.
Breakfast is included on morning and full-day drives, taken at a restaurant inside the park, so nothing of your stay is given up by leaving before dawn.
What you actually see is never the same twice. A drive might be elephant crossing in front of you at first light, or a leopard flat along a marula branch, or an hour of nothing but hornbills before the bush suddenly opens up. Your guide reads tracks, listens for alarm calls and talks to the other vehicles. But nothing is staged and nothing is penned. That unpredictability is the whole point of it.
Half or full day
Shared safari
You join a small group in an open vehicle with an experienced guide who does the spotting and explains what you are looking at: behaviour, tracks, birds, the trees the animals are feeding on. It is the more sociable way to do it, and often the more rewarding, since half the sightings come from somebody else’s sharp eye.
Parties of four or more travel privately.
Half or full day
Private safari
A guide and a vehicle for you alone, with the day shaped around what you want rather than a fixed route. If you want to sit with a pride of lion for an hour, you sit with them. If you are after a particular bird, or you want to be somewhere specific at last light, say so and your guide will build the day around it.
It also means you set the pace. Photographers get the stops they need, and anyone who finds eleven hours a long day can simply turn for home.
Late afternoon
Sunset drive
Late afternoon is when the park changes shift. Predators stir and begin to move before the night’s hunting, herbivores take their last graze while they can still see, and the nocturnal animals start to emerge. The drive carries on past sunset into the first of the dark, so you get the golden hour and the beginning of the night in a single outing.
Guided by SANParks rangers in an open vehicle, with transfers from the lodge included.
After dark
Night drive
The Kruger after dark is a different park. Once the gates close to day visitors a spotlight works the roadside for the eyeshine that gives away a bushbaby, a genet or a civet: the small nocturnal animals almost nobody sees in daylight. Leopard and hyena are far more active, lion are often on the move, and the sound carries, with jackals calling, a distant roar, the constant hum of the bush at night.
Guided by SANParks rangers in an open vehicle, with transfers from the lodge included. Take a jacket.
Planning
When to come
The dry season, roughly May to October, is generally the best time for game viewing. The bush thins out, the grass dies back and animals gather at what water is left. Mornings are cold and the days are clear.
From November to April the Lowveld is green, lush and dramatic. It is an especially rewarding time for birdlife and photography, with summer skies, migrant species, newborn animals and an entirely different feel to the landscape.
Whichever season you come in, bring warm layers for an early start. An open vehicle at 05:30 is cold even on a day that turns hot.
Rates
Safari rates are available on request. Ask us and we will send the current list through.
Ask about safaris
