Best Locations for Viewing in Kruger National Park

To make things a little easier, we've highlighted the best viewing locations and times of year for the more popular of the Kruger Park's animals.

Lions and Leopards

For lions and leopards you will want to visit the Sabi Sands - a private reserve in the southern Kruger area that is located adjacent to the Kruger Park proper.

The Sabi area has a higher concentration of leopards than anywhere else in or around the Kruger National Park. You can also easily get up close to lions here, as well as elephant, zebra, buffalo and giraffe.

Game viewing is generally better here than anywhere else in the park thanks to the ability to drive off-road (this is not allowed in the park, but is offered by most private lodges located in the adjacent private reserves) and the number of off-road vehicles that stay in radio contact within this area, helping the guides keep tabs on where the animals are.

Leopard and lion sightings in the central Kruger and Sabi Sands are excellent throughout the year.

Elephants

The central and southern Kruger regions (Skukuza, lower Sabi area and Pretoriuskop) offer the best elephant viewing, with the best time of the year for spotting elephants being during the dry season - the winter months of April to September. It's then that the animals concentrate around permanent water sources, allowing you to find them easily and get up close to them.

Rhino

For white rhino, you will want to focus on the central and southern Kruger, and the Sabi Sands area.

White rhino are grazers and your chances of seeing them on the grasslands are good all year round. Black rhino - difficult to see anywhere in Africa - inhabit the central and southern Kruger areas, but sightings are rare.

Birdlife

The northern Kruger offers the best bird watching and some of the most outstanding scenery. Because the region is a transition zone between a number of habitats, there is a greater variety of birdlife and scenery here.

You will see game in this area, but numbers, as well as frequency of sightings, are lower than in the rest of the Kruger Park and its surrounding areas.

The best time to visit the northern Kruger is during the summer months (October to March).

Best of the Rest

Cheetah, hyena, buffalo, zebra, a massive amount of antelope species and African wilddog are just some of the mammals that can be found throughout the park all year round.

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