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Kruger National Park
Kruger National Park, extracts, definitions, stories, and
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About Kruger National Park:
Lying in the heart of the Lowveld is a wildlife
sanctuary like no other, its atmosphere so unique
that it allows those who enter its vastness to
immerse themselves in the unpredictability and
endless wilderness that is the true quality of
Africa.
Kruger National Park
The largest game reserve in South Africa, the Kruger
National Park is larger than Israel. Nearly 2
million hectares of land that stretch for 352
kilometres (20 000 square kilometres) from north to
south along the Mozambique border, is given over to
an almost indescribable wildlife experience.
Certainly it ranks with the best in Africa and is
the flagship of the country’s national parks - rated
as the ultimate safari experience. The Kruger
National Park lies across the provinces of
Mpumalanga and Limpopo in the north of South Africa,
just south of Zimbabwe and west of Mozambique. It
now forms part of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier
Park - a peace park that links Kruger National Park
with game parks in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, and
fences are already coming down to allow game to
freely roam in much the way it would have in the
time before man’s intervention. When complete, the
Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Park will extend
across 35 000 square kilometres, 58% of it South
African, 24% Mozambican and 18% Zimbabwean
territory.
Kruger National Park
This is the land of baobabs, fever trees, knob
thorns, marula and mopane trees underneath which
lurk the Big Five, the Little Five (buffalo weaver,
elephant shrew, leopard tortoise, ant lion and rhino
beetle), the birding Big Six (ground hornbill, kori
bustard, lappet-faced vulture, martial eagle, pel’s
fishing owl and saddle-bill stork) and more species
of mammals than any other African Game Reserve.
Kruger National Park
The Kruger Park is a self-drive destination,
although there are guided tour operators, with an
excellent infrastructure that includes picnic sites,
rest camps, waterholes and hides. The Kruger Park is
a remarkable reserve offering an incredible
experience of Africa at its most wild. (See Kruger
Park Tours for overnight and package tours lasting
from 1 night and 2 days to weeks long safaris or see
Kruger Park Day Tours for single day guided trips
into Kruger National Park.
Kruger National Park
Very broadly speaking, the Kruger National Park is
flat with a few gentle hills, and people tend to
classify the bushveld of the Kruger as unvaried and
dry, which is rather like saying South Africa is
sunny - it conceals an amazingly rich diversity. The
Kruger National Park is divided into no fewer than
six ecosystems - baobab sandveld, Lebombo
knobthorn-marula bushveld, mixed acacia thicket,
combretun-silver clusterleaf, woodland on granite,
and riverine forest.
Kruger National Park
Encompassing only 30% of the kruger park’s surface
area, the central region supports nearly half the
park’s lion population as well as numbers of
leopard, hyena and cheetah. Possibly the main reason
for this is the quantity of sweet grasses and
abundant browsing trees found in this area that
support a large group of antelope, giraffe, buffalo,
zebra and wildebeest. But this does mean that it’s a
popular region amongst tourists, and subsequently
there are a number of camps in this region. It’s
understandable though, as the chance of sighting
even one of the 60 prides of lion that make the
central region their home is a huge draw card.
This is a rather fascinating part of the Kruger
National Park, not least because the ecozones here
are noticeably different from other habitats in the
Kruger. Sightings of rare birdlife and major areas
of sand formed by river flood plains, combined with
sandstone formations of the Mozambique coastal
plain, make it attractive to visitors. There are
also a number of tropical aspects as part of the
region lies in a rain shadow and along the banks of
the Luvuvhu River is a series of riverine forest. A
picnic site on the river bank provides hours of
splendid bird viewing.
Kruger National Park
What you can witness in this part of the Kruger
National Park is extraordinary - the knocking sand
frog, a collection of bats, the nocturnal bushpig
and the rare Sharpe’s grysbok. There are samango
monkeys, packs of endangered wild dog, and the major
water pans across the Wambiya sandveld are a good
place to sight tropical warm-water fish, such as the
rainbow killifish, not found anywhere else in South
Africa. The sandstone hills, just west of Punda
Maria, is the only place where you can see the Natal
red hare and yellow-spotted rock dassie, or hyrax.
What makes a visit to this remote part of the Kruger
park so meaningful is the solitude. North of the
Orange River is a semi-arid region covering 7 000
square kilometres that sees very little rain.
Vegetation here changes very little from the
unvarying shrub mopane, which thrives in hot,
low-lying valleys. However, across this great
expanse of hot dryness, five rivers forge their way,
providing narrow corridors along whose banks grow
trees distinctly different from the mopane - the
nyala, the sycamore fig, the tamboti and the tall
apple leaf.
Kruger National Park
The Letaba and Olifants rivers contain as much as
60% of the Kruger park’s hippo population, and bird
life here abounds. There are plenty of bushpig in
the undergrowth of the Luvuvhu River and on most of
the river banks you can hope to see sizeable herds
of elephant (the Kruger National park’s latest
estimate is as many as 9000 of these beautiful
beasts), buffalo, bushbuck, impala and kudu
concentrated near a water supply. Bounded by the
Crocodile River in the south and the Sabie River in
the north, the southern region is also host to the
jagged ridge of the Lebombo Mountains along the
border with Mozambique, and the highest point in the
park, Khandzalive, in the southwestern corner -
almost in counterpoint to Pretoriuskop that lies in
the west of the southern region of the Kruger
National Park. The valleys are home to trees rarely
found in other parts of the Kruger park, such as the
Cape chestnut, coral tree and lavender fever-berry;
and granite lies beneath most of the region,
producing distinctive smoothed koppies at irregular
intervals, which are typically surrounded by rock
figs and form ideal locations for rock dassies or
hyrax, baboon and klipspringer, not to mention the
odd leopard. This is the region where you’re almost
sure of seeing a white rhino as most of them occur
here, particularly around Pretoriuskop, Mbyamiti
River and south of lower Sabie.
Kruger National Park
On the whole, there is more game purported to exist
in the southern part of the park, so if you don’t
make it to the northern reaches of the Kruger
National Park , you won’t miss out. This part of the
Kruger park is to some extent shrouded in history.
Around Pretoriuskop, known for its profusion of
trees, is Ship Mountain, its hull-shape the site of
an old wagon trail that crosses a stream marking the
birthplace of Jock of the Bushveld. The combretum
woodlands, also part of this region, attract
reasonable herds of kudu, impala, giraffe, buffalo,
zebra, white rhino and elephant, and the scarcity of
lion in this part of the park, makes way for the
cheetah and wild dog.
Kruger National Park |
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