Kruger National Park
No trip to South Africa is complete with out safari!
There are lots of great national parks in South Africa, some run by SAN Parks, some private reserves; probably the most famous though is Kruger National Park.
We drove to Kruger from Johannesburg Airport, heading for the Paul Kruger gate and Skukuza Camp.
The drive is a very easy one and takes about 5 hours, although we had a couple of stops on the way so it took us a bit longer.
One of the stops was Millys. Apparently this place is a bit of an institution fort he N4 road trip and I can see why!
Millys is a family owned business, a trout farm and factory and offers a restaurant, accommodation, filling station and farm stall. We had lunch there on the way and way back, the food is delicious and the service quick and efficient.
I won’t spend much time detailing our time in Kruger, I think the photos probably tell enough. We didn’t have a whole lot of luck with cats on this trip. We did see lions, twice, but on both occasions it was difficult to get a clear view of them. We manage to snap a few pictures of one old male when he stuck his head up for a while.
The highlight for us though was definitely seeing wild dogs. Scroll down further for more on that.
In regards to where we stayed:
We spent 2 nights in the park in SANS Park accommodation. One night in Skukuza Camp and the other night further north in Letaba camp. The accommodation was fantastic for what we paid (I think around 130AUD per night). We had a rondoval in both with ensuite and small kitchen. All very clean and with air-conditioning (not that we needed it).
We then spent another 2 nights outside the park at Tusk Bush Lodge (details further below).
One thing I will say is that Letaba is quite far up in the park and I think we did underestimate the distance at a slow speed. It was ok, but I think if we were to do it again for only a couple of nights I would stay for both nights in the lower half of the park to reduce the distance and give more time to enjoy our surrounds. The day after we stayed in Letaba was a lot of driving to get to the south of the park.
A lot of people in the camp organise their own Braai, but if you're about as organised as us, the food options were good in both camps and we had an awesome steak at Cattle Baron in Skukuza camp.
Tusk Bush Lodge, as mentioned, is outside of the park approximately ten minutes to the Crocodile Bridge gate, the most southern entry. So not far! We paid around 150AUD per night which included breakfast and found it great value. The rooms were big and very comfortable and the lodge itself had plenty of space to relax.
The lodge is also in a small park, Marloth Park, so there's an excellent chance you will see animals when you are just relaxing by the campfire.
We had Kudu, warthog, zebra and more wondering around while enjoying a quiet drink at night and coffee in the morning. We even spotted one cheeky Kudu drinking from the pool :-)
But back to the animals in the big park…….
Yes, we saw a pack of wild dog literally in the last hour of our last day, in the park. And they were awesome! There were 6 of them sitting smack in the middle of the road, taking a nap I presume.
We sat with them for as long as we could before having to head off to make the gate closure at 6pm, but they were fun to watch and we felt extremely lucky to see them as they are not that common. I just love their white fluffy tails and markings.
So that was our time in Kruger….wishing I was there now :-)