Kruger National Park Safari

One of Africa's oldest and biggest National parks, the Kruuger National Park is situated in the north east corner of South Africa. It spans two provinces; Limpopo and Mpumalanga, and borders Mocambique. It is home to the "Big 5" as well as over 100 other mammal species.

Most of the park is situated in the Lowveld. Restricted to broad valleys below 1 000m above sea level, the Lowveld is what many people consider to be the 'real' Africa. In this low-lying subtropical climate, broad-leaved trees and thorn trees co-exist happily in relatively open woodland, interspersed with long grass - and, of course, game. Wildlife abounds.

In the far north, it gets hotter and the vegetation changes to mopane woodland and, right in the northern part of the country, huge baobab trees dominate the landscape. The rivers here tend to be broad and slow-moving and may consist of no more than a few unconnected pools at the end of the dry season but that's when the game congregates around the few known water sources - so it all evens out. You may have heard the cynical remark that Kruger is 'too developed' with loads of town-like camps and other infrastructure. Well, yes.

The park does have a number of good accommodation options - more than 20 SANParks camps and a few private luxury lodges as well. That may sound like a lot - but remember that Kruger is the size of Wales - and in all that space there is one town - the main camp, Skukuza, is virtually a small town - about a dozen tiny hamlets with less than a hundred families and a few out of they way camps that would probably relate to a small farmstead. That leaves an awful lot of real wilderness.

In the last 20 years most of the fences have been removed between the private reserves and South Africa`s Kruger National Park, allowing game to roam freely back and forth. Arguably the most famous of the parks is Sabi Sands, it is here that you will find well known lodges such as Londolozi, Singita and Mala Mala. The Timbavati area is slightly further north and is well known for its large populations of elephant and buffalo. The Kruger National Park is over 2.2 million hectares in size and has recently tendered large untouched concessions, it is here where luxury lodges such as Singita Lebombo and Tinga can be found.

History

The Kruger National Park was established 26 March 1898. One quarter of a million hectares of Lowveld land was set aside as a 'Government Reserve' on The fledgling reserve was given the name the Sabi Game Reserve. This area remains at the core of today's Kruger National Park.

After the Anglo-Boer war Scottish born James Stevenson-Hamilton was appointed the park’s first warden on 1 July 1902. In 1903, Stevenson-Hamilton oversaw an extension of the Sabi Reserve twenty kilometres or so back towards the Drakensberg Escarpment. He was also put in charge of a new Reserve established that year, the Shingwedzi, comprising an additional half a million hectares of land to the north of the Sabie. On 31 May 1926 the National Parks Act was proclaimed and with it the merging of the Sabie and Shingwedzi Game Reserves into the Kruger National Park. The first motorists entered the park in 1927 for a fee of one pound.

Today the surface area of Kruger National Park is 7,580 miles² (19,633 km²).