Kruger National Park: more than the “Big 5,” the Big Everything!
I don’t much care for the distinction of the Big 5, a concept that I’ve critiqued elsewhere, but if you are going to go on a game safari, you couldn’t do much better than Kruger National Park, South Africa. Located a day’s drive outside of Johannesberg, Kruger is very accessible, and the roads within are almost universally paved and in good repair.
I’ve spent time in Etosha National Park in Namibia, and been through Chobe National Park in Botswana, and they both have their advantages. Etosha is open salt pan, meaning that you can see the animals from far off. Chobe is excellent for large mammals, notably elephant and hippos. But Kruger offers it all. And I was fortunate enough to see mot of it.
If you go to Kruger, you’ll have myriad choices to pick from. I wouldn’t recommend going for more than 3 days, after that you’ll be burned out. My particular visit was only two days in the park, but we were in the truck from 7:00 a.m. to well after dark. Two days was more than enough.
If you’re given the chance, stay inside the park. Our campground, 2 km in, was well protected by a high fence and guarded gate. This didn’t stop the hyenas from wandering the perimeter at night. And a civet even came by (it was too dark for me to get a useable photo of such a shy cat). Our last night in the park, a pair of elephants got into a trumpeting-and-smashing-trees match just south of our tents (I seriously got up and checked the fence, because it sounded like they were going to come through it) and a herd of gazelle apparently got attacked by a predator of some kind. I could hear the gazelle do their “danger” snorting, then heard things running, then heard a blood-curdling scream. There was a cheetah in the area also, but I just missed seeing him twice.
The animals were incredible. We saw four rhinos, including a mother and child. We saw three hyenas, first one alone then a pair. We saw a honey badger, which is aparnelty rare (It moved too quick to get a photo). On both of our sunset drives, we saw a leopard. Even better, we saw a caracal, a very rare cat, with its dinner, a franklin, in its mouth. Of course we saw elephants, buffalo and lions, and the ever present wildebeest and gazelle. Steenbok were common, as were vultures and hawks. We saw kudu, waterbok and giraffe just about everywhere. Given the way that the skittish giraffe ran away from our vehicle, we joke about calling ours a “giraffe-assed” tour.
One of the highlights of the trip, beyond finding a pride of lions sleeping at the side of the road completely oblivious to the traffic jam that they were causing, was that we twice managed to piss off elephants. Not sure how. Don’t want to repeat it. The firs time was the scariest. A mother and baby crossed in front of us – nothing unusual there, But when they were in front of us, the mother peed on her hind leg. Apparently this is a sign of anger. Once they were safely on the other side and the baby out of sight, the mother returned, trumpeted at us and charged us.
Our guide told us that females only make false charges, they don’t actually attack. She backed off, made another trumpeting and charged us again, this time getting much closer. This time, when she went to stop, she was at the edge of the road (like I said, much closer) and her hind legs slid down the embankment. She went from angry face to wide eyed as I think she thought she was going to hit us! No I don’t have pictures of that – like everyone else (except our guide) I was cringing on the other side of the vehicle when that happened.
The second time, we interrupted a large herd crossing the road and two of the males took up positions between us and the herd and started trumpeting at us. Finally a big one bringing up the rear (the matriarch?) came along and pushed the males along.
Many people choose to self-drive the park, and that option was offered to me by a travel agent who was trying to fit my budget. I’m so glad I didn’t do it.
Unlike Etosha, Kruger is a veldt, a large grassland with many different ecosystems. A good guide will know which animals to look for in which eco-systems. Our guide was excellent. He spotted male lions sleeping under a tree a good half a kilometre away. He also spotted a couple of sleeping rhinos hidden behind a wildebeest. You know your guide is good when other vehicles slow down to see what you’re looking at and they can’t spot it. The rhinos stayed hidden to the other vehicles, except one we told.
Some people don’t like going to Kruger becaue it is too wild, it is too hard to see the animals. For them Etosha, with its wide open, nowhere-to-hide pan is a better option. But if you want to see the animals in their preferred elements using all of their camouflage and wile, Kruger is the place to go (well, at least until I get out to the Serengeti, hopefully at Christmas),
— SGP
