Kruger National Park, South Africa

October 2008

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The Kruger National Park is well known as one of the great parks of Africa, but previous to this I had never visited as I had heard that it was not especialy great as it was very crowded, and much harder to get as good sightings as you could in a game reserve or in places like Botswana and Tanzania. But in orcder to form my own opinion I spent two driving north through the main park before spending a bit of time in the more secluded and little known northern section, the so-called Makeleke region. And to be honest, what I had been told was basically correct. Whilst I did have some good sightings it is nowhere near as good as the Okavango Delta, Etosha or even the Serengeti.

The main exception was the northern part, which while lacking much of the bigger more famous game had a panoply of the smaller species, including by far the largest number of bushbabies I have ever seen. I stayed at a lovely lodge called The Outpost, where the excellent guide spent 4 days showing me all there was to see, including the spectacular Lanner Gorger and the beauty of the Fever Tree forests.

Otherwise the main sightings included a baby Chacma Baboon playing, a Martial Eagle devouring its meal, leopards in broad daylight in the middle of a dried river, and various night creatures like White-tailed Mongoose, Lesser Bushbabies and African Civet.

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