Kruger National Park was the one safari places I had had mixed feelings about. I knew that it was home to all of the big five and the chances of some good animal spotting was quite big, but the park had always had a commercialized ring in my ears. We had also arrived in the school holiday, when it was expected to be extra busy and I was prepared for the worst.
When we arrived in what was going to be our last safari stop on the route, I was surprised to see that it was not as busy as I had first feared. I can’t hide the fact that it was a place with a big capacity as the game drive trucks were bigger, they had a big camps for overnight stays, a few shops and even a small movie theater for wildlife documentaries, but it was not the Disneylandparklike place I had imagined. It might have been the big roads that made it feel less cramped or the big amounts of animals that took the focus away from the humans, but I must say that I am positively surprised by the place.
Even though we had already travelled through a several national parks and had plenty of game drives, we had still only managed to see two out of “the big five”. We had only seen the African elephant and the buffalo. The lion, leopard and rhinoceros were still yet to be seen, and we had been told that Kruger National Park was place where we would most likely be able to see them all.
It did not take long before we spotted a couple of white rhinos, making it three out of five. After that everyone were on the lookout for lions and leopards, but the cats were nowhere to be seen. But Kruger National Park had still been a great place for animal watching, where animals such as impalas, giraffes, kudus, monkeys and elephants were plentiful. If you are interested in seeing lots of animals, and don’t mind not being the only one in the park, Kruger is definitely the place to go.