Four days in Kruger National Park: the animals we saw

▶Play video

We spent a week just outside the southern end of Kruger National Park in South Africa, with four days of game drives led by Irvin, our driver and guide. I came home with roughly 2,400 photos. These are my favourites, along with what happened between them.

Saturday 29 August: arrival#

We landed and picked up the hire car, a Toyota Starlet so new that we were the first people ever to drive it. Over the week it faithfully carried us to the reserve and back, around the local area, and later to the caves, Chimp Eden and the Petroport, 950 km across the country in all. Great fun, and slightly terrifying, because nobody wants to be the one who puts the first scratch on a brand new car. It went back pristine, with no damage and no fines. That first afternoon we drove out to the reserve and did not get up to much. A boma dinner round the fire, an early night, and the alarm set for a time that did not feel like morning.

The routine#

Every park day went the same way. Meet Irvin at five in the morning in the dark, climb into the open vehicle with the packed lunch and too many layers, and be at Numbi Gate for opening. Numbi has a reputation, and the road to it has had trouble in the past, but we went in and out of it every day and never felt anything but safe.

Then hours of driving, slowly, eyes on every bush, until the coffee caught up with you and the only question was how far it was to the next rest camp. Skukuza, Lower Sabie and Pretoriuskop are proper places, with shops and restaurants, and a stop at one of them for the packed lunch, or something better, became the fixed point of every day.

Day 1, Sunday 30 August: a slow start and then everything at once#

The first morning began with zebra, giraffe and impala. Then a red-crested korhaan stood beside a termite mound like it owned it, and a steenbok, the smallest antelope we saw all week, froze in the bush a few metres from the car and stared at us with enormous eyes.

Before we had finished the coffee, a Cape buffalo bull stood up out of the thicket and glared at us, and two elephants walked across the road in front of the car.

A lilac-breasted roller. Every safari has one photo of this bird, and now so do we.

We also found a greater kudu bull, my favourite antelope: spiral horns, white stripes down the flanks, and a way of vanishing into the bush the moment you lift the camera.

At the picnic site the baboons and vervet monkeys had the same idea as everyone else, which was lunch.

The last stop of the afternoon was a hyena den beside the road, with a cub sitting in the entrance watching us with enormous ears.

A spotted hyena cub at the mouth of the den.

Day 2, Monday 31 August: wild dogs and four leopards#

We were at the gate before sunrise and it paid off. Giraffes wandered into the red-leaved bushwillow scrub in the first light, and then came the sighting we had not dared hope for: African wild dogs. There are only a few hundred in the whole park. A small pack was working through the grass beside the road, and one of them trotted straight down the tar towards us with that rocking, tireless gait they have.

Giraffes in the red-leaved bushwillow scrub.

We would have gone home happy with that. Instead, an hour later, we found the first leopard of the day in a tree with an impala it had hauled up into the branches, draped over a limb with its legs hanging down, and later sitting up in the fork looking around.

On a granite boulder nearby a family of klipspringers were doing what klipspringers do, which is stand on top of rocks, and a waterbuck cow looked back at us over her shoulder from the dry riverbed.

Then, mid-morning, a second leopard. This one was lying in the shade at the edge of the road when we arrived, got up, walked across the dirt directly in front of the vehicle, unhurried, and then leapt into the long grass and looked back at us from the thicket. It was the most intense minute of the trip.

During the sighting, an Argentinian tourist asked Irvin if he could get out for a wee, then kept asking. Irvin could only laugh: the leopard was lying beside the road.

Pretending we are not there.

The leopard crosses the road.

Later we found a giraffe in the green and a southern ground hornbill showing off the red skin of its face.

That afternoon a pride of lions was lying in a dry riverbed, three hundred metres away and shimmering in the heat. The first photo below is the honest one: that is what the sighting looked like to us. The second is the same lions with the lens and a heavy crop doing all the work.

After that, zebras everywhere.

And then, just before we turned for the gate, two more, a few minutes apart. The third shot across the road ahead of us and into the bush, gone almost before we had registered it. The fourth we watched for a while, but it was a long way off and behind layer after layer of thicket, so every photo is a smudge of spots behind branches and you will have to take my word for it. Four leopards, four sightings, one day.

Tuesday 1 September: rest day#

No alarm. Massages back at the reserve, a slow lunch, and a run into the shopping mall in the nearest town for supplies. Two days of five o'clock starts had earned it.

Next to the mall is the Lowveld National Botanical Garden, which we had not planned on and which turned out to be one of the best hours of the week: the Crocodile River pouring over the rocks in two sets of falls, a suspension bridge across the gorge, red-hot pokers with milkweed locusts the length of a finger clambering over them, and, on the bank by the water, a water monitor, the big lizard we had been hoping to see in the park.

We'd also loved the Butchart Gardens in Victoria on our Pacific coast trip earlier in the year.

The water monitor, on the bank below the falls. A frame from a phone video.

Day 3, Wednesday 2 September: the lion day#

Back in the park, and the day started with lions in the early morning. We passed a zebra, and then a lioness came walking down the road towards us, followed by a black-maned male who walked straight at the car, past it, and lay down in the grass. The lioness lay down on the tarmac and refused to move, and the queue of cars behind Irvin's vehicle grew. We saw lions four or five times that day, in different places, and never got tired of it.

A zebra in the early morning.

We left them and dropped down to the river, where the hippos were still in the water with the early light on them, one hauled out on the bank and the rest surfacing and snorting.

Later that morning an elephant came up the road towards us with its ears out, and every car in the queue quietly reversed.

Ears out. The cars reverse.

The antelope were out in the heat of the day: a kudu bull with a full two-and-a-half twists of horn, and waterbuck cows resting in the shade. In the grass beside the road, half hidden in the bush, was a Southern African rock python. Irvin put it at six metres and said it is often seen around that spot. We saw a coil and a head and took his word for the rest.

At the picnic site a vervet monkey sat on the table waiting for someone to look away from their lunch.

Day 4, Thursday 3 September: the big day#

The last morning in the park was the one where everything happened. It began with a pride of lions in the long grass, a male with his lionesses, in no hurry to do anything at all, until the male stood up, looked our way, and sat back down. Then zebras in the early light, and the big male on his feet and walking through the grass, full length in the low sun, while a lioness walked straight towards the car.

And then the cheetahs: the mother the guides called "Super Mom," with her three cubs, on the road in the morning sun and completely relaxed about the cars. We were a few metres away for the best part of an hour. The cubs walked down the road towards us, flopped in the shade, sat side by side looking in opposite directions, and leaned on their mother while she kept watch. It was the sighting of the trip and I have far too many photos of it.

We left them and found another male lion, old and scarred, in the grass.

A southern ground hornbill was marching along the verge and let us get close enough for a portrait: the red skin of its face and throat inflated, and a beak like a pickaxe.

The hyenas only just woke up enough to look at us.

Near the end of the drive we stopped for a baboon mother with a baby clinging to her chest, and a troop sitting in the tops of the trees against the sky.

And then, with the gate in sight and the trip in the park all but over, one more elephant stepped out of the long grass beside the road and stood there, close enough to fill the frame, as if to see us off. After four days of looking for animals it felt like a gift, and neither of us said much for a while.

The last elephant, right before the gate.

Friday 4 September: chimpanzees, and the serval#

The last full day was off the safari roster. In the morning we went to Chimp Eden, the Jane Goodall Institute's sanctuary for rescued chimpanzees outside Nelspruit, and spent an hour watching a group of them doing very little in the sun. Then another massage, and in the late afternoon the last drive around the estate, where a giraffe stood against a grey sky and watched us go past, the last one of the trip.

Chimp Eden. Phone photo.

We went out after dark. Somewhere along the road the spotlight picked out a pair of eyes low in the grass ahead of us, and for a few seconds we watched a serval stalking up the track towards the vehicle: long legs, big ears, and the spotted coat. The moment it realised it had been seen it turned and was gone into the bush. No photo. It was over too fast and the camera was in its bag. Servals are secretive and mostly nocturnal, and seeing one at all is a stroke of luck. Seeing one stalk you is better.

The last night on the reserve.

Saturday 5 September: caves, rhinos, and home#

The drive back to Johannesburg in the Starlet had two stops. The first was the Sudwala Caves, the famous ones in the hills above Nelspruit. They are old and large and everyone stops there, and I came out without a single photo, which tells you how interesting I found them. The second was for the one animal Kruger had not shown us. The Alzu Petroport on the N4 is a service station with a game enclosure behind the forecourt, and there they were: white rhinos grazing beside a waterhole with blesbok and buffalo for company, between the petrol pumps and the motorway. Not the wild sighting we had wanted, and the phone had to stand in for the camera, but it made it five out of five.

Then the airport, and home.

The checklist#

All of the Big Five: lion, leopard, elephant and buffalo in the park, and rhino, in the end, at a petrol station.

Mammals: lion, leopard (four animals in four sightings), cheetah, African wild dog, serval, spotted hyena, African elephant, Cape buffalo, white rhino, hippopotamus, giraffe, plains zebra, blue wildebeest, greater kudu, waterbuck, impala, blesbok, steenbok, klipspringer, warthog, chacma baboon, vervet monkey.

Reptiles: Nile crocodile, a Southern African rock python, a water monitor at the botanical garden, and a row of terrapins basking on a rock in the dam.

Birds: lilac-breasted roller, southern ground hornbill, southern yellow-billed hornbill, Cape glossy starling, red-crested korhaan, a secretary bird striding through the grass too far away for a photo, a bateleur and an African fish eagle overhead, white-backed and lappet-faced vultures bathing in the river, a dark chanting goshawk, a blacksmith lapwing, and a steady rotation of brown eagles on treetops that I never managed to identify with confidence.

Insects: a citrus swallowtail, a grasshopper the size of a thumb, and the milkweed locusts on the red-hot pokers at the botanical garden.

And, not counting because they were rescued rather than wild: the chimpanzees at Chimp Eden.

The camera#

Everything in the park was shot on a Canon EOS 80D with the EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS II. I bought both back in 2016, so the kit is ten years old, and it held up well: the autofocus kept up with wild dogs, the stabiliser earned its keep on a bumpy vehicle, and the battery outlasted me every day. At full size, particularly after a heavy crop, the ten-year-old sensor shows its age. The results are good, although not exceptional by 2026 standards.

What I did wish for was reach. Three hundred millimetres on a crop sensor is fine for a lion in the road and not enough for a leopard in a tree on the far side of a riverbed, and a lot of the frames on the card are an animal a long way away, sharp on the grass in front of it and soft on the thing I wanted. Something like 500mm on a crop body, or 800mm on full frame, would have been incredible. But I was not trying to compete with National Geographic. I was having fun and capturing memories, and for that the old kit did the job.