South Africa · Lowveld
Kruger National Park (Hazyview)
The great self-drive safari: Big Five country you can work through in your own car, with private reserves over the western fence for the tracking you cannot do yourself.
Kruger is South Africa's flagship game reserve, a slab of Lowveld bush the size of a small country running up the Mozambique border, and the easiest place in Africa to find the Big Five from your own hire car. Sealed roads link rest camps the whole length of it, so you drive yourself, set your own hours and sit at a waterhole as long as you like. Along the unfenced western boundary the private reserves, Sabi Sand above all, add off-road tracking and the continent's most reliable leopards.
Suggested stay
3–5 days
Language
English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa
Currency
ZAR
Timezone
UTC+2
Why you'll love Kruger National Park (Hazyview)
The Big Five Lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo and rhino all live here in real numbers, and a few unhurried days on the river roads usually turns up most of them.
Self-drive freedom You choose the hour, the road and how long to wait at a waterhole - a safari almost nowhere else lets you run entirely yourself.
The rest camps Thatched huts inside the fence where you braai under the stars and fall asleep to hyena whooping and lions calling in the dark.
Sheer scale Nearly two million hectares, from granite hills and thorn thicket in the south to mopane, baobabs and the Luvuvhu River in the far north.
Best time to visit
Feb-Nov
26-33° days
25.044° S, 31.128° E
UTC+2 · Africa/Johannesburg
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Weather & when to go to Kruger National Park (Hazyview)
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Feb-Nov
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Kruger National Park (Hazyview)
No bad season, but the bush changes completely. Through the green months the grass is high, the trees are in leaf and the animals scatter away from the rivers, so spotting is harder even when conditions are good, and mosquitoes are about. Camps and gates fill up during South African school holidays, above all over Christmas and Easter.
Top things to do in Kruger National Park (Hazyview)
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Sabie River road - drive the Skukuza to Lower Sabie run
nature wildlife safari 👍 PopularThe most productive stretch of tar in the park, following the Sabie River east past Nkuhlu picnic site to Lower Sabie. Elephant and buffalo come down to drink, hippo lie up in the pools, and leopard are found in the riverine trees more often here than anywhere else you can reach without a guide. Drive it slowly, early.
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Sunset Dam - sit out a morning at the waterhole
nature wildlife safari 👍 PopularA shallow pan just outside Lower Sabie gate where you park, switch off and let the animals come to you. Hippo and crocodile are permanent, and through the dry months a steady procession of elephant, waterbuck, giraffe and impala files down to drink. Waiting rather than driving is the skill Kruger rewards, and this is the place to learn it.
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Night drive - go out after the gates close
nature wildlife safari 👍 PopularCamps run guided drives in open vehicles with a spotlight, and it is the only way to be out in the park after closing time. The cast changes completely: genet, civet, honey badger, bushbaby, spotted hyena on the road and, with luck, lions moving to hunt. Cold at speed even in the warmer months, so take a jacket.
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Sabi Sand - track leopards on a private reserve drive
nature wildlife safari ⭐ Highly recommendedThe reserve on Kruger's unfenced western edge, where rangers and Shangaan trackers work off-road on foot signs and can stay with an animal once found. Generations of leopards here are relaxed around vehicles, which makes sightings closer and longer than anything a public road offers. Expensive, and the trade-off for that access.
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Wilderness trails - walk the bush with armed rangers
nature wildlife safari adventure ⭐ Highly recommendedMulti-night walking trails run out of rustic camps with no electricity, two armed rangers and a small group on foot for a few hours each morning and afternoon. You track rather than tick off, reading dung, prints and alarm calls, and an encounter with rhino or elephant on their level rearranges how the whole park feels. Book far ahead.
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Lake Panic bird hide - a morning at the water's edge
nature wildlifeA wooden hide on a dam near Skukuza, and one of the few spots in the park you may leave your car. Herons, jacanas, kingfishers and darters work the lilies at eye level, crocodile drift past below the rail, and elephant sometimes wade in on the far bank. The best hour in Kruger for anyone who likes birds.
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Olifants camp - the escarpment view over the river
nature wildlife scenicThe most dramatically sited camp in Kruger, on a cliff a long way above a bend of the Olifants River. From the lookout wall you watch elephant herds cross the sandbanks and buffalo strung out along the water far below, with the country rolling away for miles. Worth a night even if you are based further south.
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Letaba Elephant Hall - the tusks of the Magnificent Seven
nature wildlife historyA small museum at Letaba camp holding the skulls and enormous ivory of the park's seven greatest tuskers, alongside displays on elephant biology and the long argument over how many the park should carry. A rare indoor hour on a safari itinerary, and a good one on a hot afternoon.
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Thulamela and Masorini - the park's stone-walled past
history culture artsKruger is an archaeological landscape as well as a game reserve. Thulamela, in the far north, is a reconstructed hilltop stone settlement whose people traded gold and glass beads towards the Indian Ocean; Masorini, near Phalaborwa gate, preserves an iron-smelting village with its furnaces. Both are visited on guided walks.
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The far north - mopane, baobabs and the Pafuri triangle
nature wildlife off beaten pathAbove the Olifants the park empties out and changes character: mopane scrub, huge baobabs, and at Pafuri a fever-tree forest on the Luvuvhu River that is the best birding country in South Africa. Fewer cars, longer distances and less predictable game, and the part of Kruger that regulars keep coming back for.
Best areas to stay in Kruger National Park (Hazyview)
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Lower Sabie
Best game viewing $Riverfront camp, the best game viewing
Explore hotels in Lower Sabie →
Skukuza
First-time visitors $Park headquarters, largest camp
Explore hotels in Skukuza →
Satara
Predator country $Open central grassland, lion country
Explore hotels in Satara →
Hazyview
Outside the gates $$Banana-country town outside the fence
Explore hotels in Hazyview →
Sabi Sand Game Reserve
Guided luxury $$$Luxury lodges, unfenced private reserve
Explore hotels in Sabi Sand Game Reserve →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Kruger National Park (Hazyview)
Getting to & around Kruger National Park (Hazyview)
Getting there
Fly to Kruger Mpumalanga International near Mbombela, hire a car and drive to the southern gates in about an hour.
Flight
Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport (MQP)
The airport sits between Mbombela and White River with all the car hire desks in the terminal. It is roughly an hour by road to Hazyview and the Phabeni or Numbi gates, or about two hours to Malelane and Crocodile Bridge in the far south. Lodges will send a transfer if you would rather not drive.
Flight
Skukuza Airport
A small strip inside the park a few minutes from Skukuza camp, with scheduled flights from Johannesburg and Cape Town. The quickest way in, and you can hire a car on arrival.
Flight
Eastgate Airport, Hoedspruit
The gateway for the central and northern park and for the private reserves off Orpen gate, served from Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Drive
Southern gates
About five to six hours from Johannesburg on the N4 through Mbombela, the route most South Africans take. Roads are good and the drive is straightforward.
Coach
Mbombela (Nelspruit)
Intercity coaches run from Johannesburg and Pretoria to Mbombela, but there is no public transport onward into the park, so you still need a car or a transfer.
Getting around
Self-drive
The normal way. Tar roads link the main camps and gravel loops run to the waterholes; any hire car copes.
TBC
Guided game drive
Open vehicles from the camps at dawn, sunset and after dark, with a guide who knows where things have been seen.
TBC
Guided bush walk
Morning walks with two armed rangers, the only way to be on foot outside camps and picnic sites.
TBC
Walking in camp
Rest camps are fenced, so you move about freely inside them; between gate times you must stay in the vehicle.
Free
Lodge transfer
Private lodges meet guests at the airports and gates, and their guests do not need a car at all.
TBC
Day trips from Kruger National Park (Hazyview)
Panorama Route
Full dayCanyon and escarpment lookouts
The escarpment drive above the Lowveld: the Three Rondavels over the Blyde River Canyon, the sculpted rock and plunge pools of Bourke's Luck Potholes, God's Window looking a kilometre down into the haze, and a string of waterfalls around Graskop. The natural pairing with a Kruger trip.
Getting there
car | tour
About 45 min to 2 hr each way by car from Hazyview
Pilgrim's Rest and Sabie
Half dayGold-rush village
A whole 1870s digging town kept as a museum, with corrugated-iron shopfronts along one street, the old printing works and a cemetery of prospectors. Sabie, on the way, sits among pine plantations with the Mac Mac Falls and pools just up the road.
Getting there
car
About 1 hr each way by car from Hazyview
Moholoholo Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre
Half dayRescued wildlife centre
A rehabilitation centre below the Drakensberg escarpment taking in injured and poisoned animals, many of them raptors, with leopard, honey badger and vultures that cannot be released. Tours run at set times and the talk on poisoning and snaring is blunt and worth hearing.
Getting there
car | tour
About 1.5 hr each way by car towards Hoedspruit
Barberton and the Makhonjwa Mountains
Full dayAncient rock geotrail
A gold-rush town of verandahed houses below the Makhonjwa Mountains, whose rocks are among the oldest and best preserved on the planet and are World Heritage listed. The geotrail up towards the Eswatini border is a spectacular drive with roadside stops explaining what you are looking at.
Getting there
car
About 2 hr each way by car via Mbombela
Eswatini
1-2 daysMountain kingdom
The small kingdom on Kruger's southern doorstep, worth an overnight rather than a dash: the craft workshops and glass studio of the Malkerns valley, Mlilwane and Hlane game reserves, and hill country that feels nothing like the Lowveld. Take passports and expect a queue at the border.
Getting there
car
About 2-3 hr each way by car via the Jeppe's Reef border
A little history of Kruger National Park (Hazyview)
People have used this stretch of Lowveld for a very long time: San painted its granite shelters, Iron Age communities smelted at Masorini, and the stone-walled hilltop at Thulamela traded gold and Indian Ocean glass beads in the centuries before the Portuguese arrived. What kept farmers out later was disease. Malaria and the tsetse fly made the Lowveld deadly for cattle and people alike, so it stayed a hunting ground rather than a settled one.
By the 1890s the hunting had gutted the game, and in 1898 the South African Republic under President Paul Kruger proclaimed the Sabi Game Reserve between the Sabie and Crocodile rivers. James Stevenson-Hamilton, appointed warden after the Anglo-Boer War, spent decades evicting hunters and residents so thoroughly that he was nicknamed Skukuza. The reserve became Kruger National Park in 1926 and opened to cars the next year, which set the pattern that still defines it: an ordinary family in an ordinary vehicle, finding animals for themselves.
President Paul Kruger proclaims the Sabi Game Reserve between the Sabie and Crocodile rivers, after decades of hunting have emptied the Lowveld.
James Stevenson-Hamilton becomes the first warden and begins clearing hunters and residents, earning the name Skukuza.
The National Parks Act merges the Sabi and Shingwedzi reserves into Kruger National Park, the first national park in South Africa.
The park opens to motor cars; three vehicles come through in the first season.
The boundaries are fenced, cutting the old migration routes and forcing decades of argument over how many elephant the park can carry.
The Makuleke community is removed from the Pafuri triangle in the far north and the land is added to the park.
The Makuleke land claim is settled: the community regains title and chooses to keep the land as conservation country.
The Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park is signed with Mozambique and Zimbabwe, and the fence on the eastern boundary starts coming down.
Rhino poaching escalates sharply, and anti-poaching becomes the defining problem of the park's modern era.
Know before you go
Payment
Cards everywhere
English
Everywhere
Wifi
Limited
Power
Type C / M / N
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+27
Mobile network & SIM card
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FAQs about Kruger National Park (Hazyview)
▸ When is the best time to visit Kruger?
The dry winter months are the classic choice: the grass is short, the trees are bare and the animals concentrate on permanent water, so you see more with less effort. The green season is lush and full of newborn animals and migrant birds, but the bush is thick and sightings are harder won.
▸ How many days do you need in Kruger?
Three to five. Two nights is enough for a taste of the south, but the park rewards a slow pace and repeat drives on the same roads. Five lets you move north to Satara or Olifants and see the country change, which is the point of a park this long.
▸ Can you drive yourself around Kruger?
Yes, and most people do. Main roads are tarred, loops are graded gravel, and any ordinary hire car manages. The rules are simple: stay in the vehicle except at camps, picnic sites and marked hides, keep to the speed limit, and be inside a camp by gate closing time.
▸ Will I see the Big Five?
Over three or four days of patient driving, probably most of them. Elephant, buffalo and lion are common; leopard takes luck or a guide; rhino has become genuinely hard as poaching has cut the population. A private reserve raises the odds on leopard sharply.
▸ Is Kruger better than a private reserve?
They are different trips. Kruger is cheap, independent and vast, and you find things yourself from a road. A private reserve like Sabi Sand costs far more and gives you a guide, a tracker, off-road driving and much closer sightings. Many people do a few nights of each.
▸ Is malaria a risk in Kruger?
The Lowveld is a low-risk malaria area, with the risk highest in the hot wet months and low in winter. Take medical advice on prophylaxis before you travel, use repellent at dusk and dawn, and sleep under a fan or net. Plenty of families visit without incident.
▸ Is Kruger good for children?
Very. Self-drive suits families, rest-camp huts are simple and fenced, and camps have pools and shops for the hot middle of the day. Guided walks and wilderness trails carry minimum ages, but game drives and the park itself have none.