Question

Write a diary you prepared before visiting the game reserve

Answer 1

We spent most of our time in the southern region of the game reserve and one night in the central region. Plus we saw the big 5 on our safari!

December is the rainy season, so the vegetation is very lush and green. Luckily it didn’t rain much while we were there. The days were hot and humid though.

Our Kruger Park trip report is broken down into 5 sections:

Kruger Park Trip Report Part 1: Cape Town to JohannesburgKruger Park Trip Report Part 2: Johannesburg to SkukuzaKruger Park Trip Report Part 3: Skukuza to OlifantsKruger Park Trip Report Part 4: Olifants to PretoriuskopKruger Park Trip Report Part 5: Pretoriuskop to Cape TownKruger Park Trip Report Part 1Cape Town to Johannesburg, 15th December

We caught a South African Airways afternoon flight from Cape Town International Airport to Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport.

It only took 45 minutes to drive from central Cape Town to the airport, park the car and check in. The flight took 2 hours.

We’d booked overnight accommodation at the City Lodge hotel at Johannesburg Airport. It’s a really convenient place to stay. You can walk straight through to the hotel from inside the airport. No catching taxis. No waiting for hotel shuttle buses.

Johannesburg often gets heavy sub-tropical thunderstorms and it was teaming with rain when we arrived. Walking to our hotel undercover saved us and our luggage from getting drenched!

Kruger Park Trip Report Part 2Johannesburg to Skukuza, 16th December

This is the start of our Kruger Park trip report proper. On this day we started our safari!

We got up at 5:30am and made an early start to get to Kruger National Park sooner rather than later. We’d booked a Budget hire car and picked it up from Johannesburg Airport. Rental car outlets at the airport are open 24 hours a day.

We left the airport at 6:30am. It was still pouring with rain outside then!

We used our GPS to navigate to the N12 freeway. Our standard GPS cable which would normally slot into the cigarette lighter for power, wouldn’t stay in place there. We had to hold it in by hand for the 20 minutes or so it took to get onto the N12. The Opel Corsa that we had also had a junky indicator lever, but other than that we got to Kruger National Park and back fine!

The N12 freeway merges with the N4 and we carried along this way. There are three toll gates en route to Kruger Park. At 8:00am we stopped at a roadhouse and had breakfast at the Steers there.

Our next stop was at a Spar supermarket in Nelspruit to buy non-perishable groceries to take with us into Kruger National Park. It’s cheaper and there’s a bigger range of things to choose from at the supermarkets outside the park. We also filled the car up with petrol for the same reason.

We left Nelspruit at 11:20am and carried on towards the closest park entrance gate. The vegetation is very lush and tropical looking in this region and there are lots of sugar cane farms. We drove through the town of Malelane and arrived at Malelane Gate at midday.

A sign at the gate told people the park was full. The sign meant that no more day visitors could go into Kruger National Park unless they had a booking. We crossed the Crocodile River at the gate, then repacked so all the things we needed were handy and reachable while sitting in the car:

Animal check listBinocularsBird check listBird identification bookCamerasDrinksMapsMosquito repellentSnacksSunscreen

Once you’re inside the park, you’re not allowed out of your car unless it’s at a rest camp, picnic spot or a place which says you’re allowed out. There are dangerous wild animals roaming the place and it’s for your own safety!

We started driving on the tarred road which leads to Skukuza Rest Camp. The first animals we saw were impala. This isn’t surprising because there are more impala than any other type of animal in Kruger National Park. They are such beautiful and innocent looking creatures. We never tire of looking at them.

We saw a lot of birds too. It’s amazing how quickly the time goes photographing and identifying birds.

Within an hour and a half we’d seen our first of the big 5! It was a lion lying around ;-). It was behind a tree and about 10 cars were stopped there for a glimpse of it.

The distance from Malelane Gate to Skukuza is only 64km (40 miles), but the speed limit on the tarred roads is only 50km (31 miles) per hour. When you’re stopping to look at animals, it can take 3 hours to travel 50km (31 miles)!

As we were getting close to Skukuza, we stopped to admire an elephant on the side of the road. Other cars had stopped to look at it too. The elephant walked onto the road and came in our direction. It was one of the tallest elephants we’d ever seen! It’s trunk dragged along the ground.