Four days in Kruger National Park: the great game park you can drive yourself

Three nights in the park's southern half, in a hire car at forty kilometres an hour: two nights at Skukuza on the Sabie river, one at Satara on the plains, and out through Orpen gate.

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Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Kruger National Park
Places
9 across 4 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Almost everywhere else in Africa, seeing big game means paying somebody to drive you. Kruger is the exception. It has tarred roads, signposts, filling stations, camps you book online and a speed limit of fifty, and you go round it in an ordinary hire car with the windows down, on your own, for a fraction of what a guided safari costs.

The park is about 350 km from top to bottom and roughly the size of Israel. Four days covers the southern third properly, which is where the game density is highest, the roads are busiest and the odds of leopard and rhino are best. Trying to see all of it in that time means spending the whole trip driving past things.

What nobody tells you first time is how much of it is waiting. You sit at a waterhole for forty minutes and nothing comes, and then a herd of elephant walks out of the treeline twenty metres from the bonnet and you stop caring about the list of animals you were keeping.

Highlights

  • Dawn on the Sabie river road, gates open, nothing else moving
  • Lake Panic hide, where you get out of the car and sit ten metres from hippo
  • A picnic site where you hire a gas grill and cook breakfast under a fig tree
  • Lions calling across the plains at Satara after the gates have shut
  • The hill where the park's first warden asked for his ashes to be scattered

Where to stay

Kruger National Park, three nights

The reserve was proclaimed in 1898 as the Sabi Game Reserve, under the presidency of Paul Kruger, and opened to the public in 1927 with three cars in the first year. Its first warden, James Stevenson-Hamilton, ran it for forty four years, evicted the people living inside it, hunted out the predators before deciding that was wrong, and gave the main camp its name: the Tsonga called him Skukuza, which is generally translated as the one who sweeps clean.

It is now part of a transfrontier park that continues into Mozambique and Zimbabwe, with the fences down. About one and a half million people visit a year, almost all of them in the southern section, which is why the roads below can feel busy at a good sighting and empty half an hour later.

Three nights splits neatly: two in the south around the Sabie river, where the bush is thick and the leopards are, and one further north at Satara on open grassland, which is lion country.

Day by day

Day 1 in Kruger National Park

In through Phabeni, and down to the water at dusk

Aim to be at the gate by early afternoon. The drive from Johannesburg takes most of the morning, the formalities take twenty minutes, and the last two hours of daylight are the best game viewing you will get on an arrival day.

Just inside the gate are the ruins of a trading post from the 1840s, which is a useful reminder that this landscape was not empty before it was a park. Then take the river road east towards camp at 30 km/h, stopping constantly.

Finish at a bird hide five minutes from the main camp, and stay until they close it.

  1. 13:30

    Albasini Ruins

    Visit

    The stone foundations of a trading store run by João Albasini, a Portuguese trader who moved goods between the Boer republic and the coast at Delagoa Bay. There is a small display and a short walk. Ten minutes, and it changes how the rest of the park reads.

  2. 15:30

    Check in at Skukuza

    Stay

    The biggest camp in the park, on a bend of the Sabie river, with a shop, a fuel pump, a restaurant on a deck over the water and a good deal more infrastructure than you expect. Collect your gate times for tomorrow at reception.

  3. 17:00

    Lake Panic Bird Hide

    Visit

    The best hide in the park and five minutes from Skukuza on a gravel spur. You walk down to a wooden platform on a small dam, unfenced and at eye level with hippo, crocodile, terrapins and half a dozen kinds of kingfisher. Sit still and stay longer than you meant to.

With more time: If you get in earlier, the loop road along the southern bank of the Sabie between the gate and camp is one of the most productive stretches in the park for rhino.

Day 2 in Kruger National Park

Dawn to Lower Sabie, and a hill in the afternoon

Be at the camp gate when it opens. The forty kilometres of river road east to Lower Sabie is the single most rewarding drive in Kruger and everything on it is out early: lion coming off a kill, elephant in the reeds, buffalo crossing in the low light.

Take the whole morning over it. Stop at the picnic site halfway and hire a gas grill for breakfast, which is a South African institution and much better than the restaurant.

In the heat of the afternoon the animals lie down and so should you. There is a small museum and library at Skukuza that is the right length for the flat hours, and then a gravel road south to a hill where the first warden's ashes were scattered.

  1. 08:00

    Nkuhlu

    Other

    A picnic site under enormous sycamore figs on the river road, with gas grills to hire, a kiosk, and vervet monkeys who will take an unattended plate without hesitation. Breakfast here is half the reason to do this drive early.

  2. 10:15

    Nthandanyathi Hide

    Visit

    A small wheelchair accessible hide over a waterhole south of Lower Sabie, whose name means where the buffalo drink. Quieter than the famous ones, good for crocodile, terrapin and waders, and reachable from either the tar or the gravel road.

  3. 13:30

    James Stevenson-Hamilton Memorial Library and Museum

    Visit

    A small library and museum at Skukuza holding the park's own written history: the warden's diaries, archaeological finds, and the arguments about what a national park was supposed to be. Cool, quiet and about an hour, which is exactly what the middle of the day needs.

  4. 15:30

    Stevenson-Hamilton Memorial

    Visit

    A plaque on a granite hill in the rhino hills, reached by a gravel loop south of camp, where James Stevenson-Hamilton and his wife Hilda are commemorated. You cannot get out, and you do not need to: the view north over the whole southern section is the point.

With more time: The gravel roads either side of the river are usually better than the tar for sightings and considerably slower. Budget double the time the map suggests, and get back inside the fence well before the gate time.

Day 3 in Kruger National Park

North across the plains to Satara

Today is a long transfer and a good one: about a hundred kilometres north through changing country, from riverine bush into open marula and knobthorn grassland. Leave at gate opening and take all day over it.

The road climbs out of the Sabie valley to a pair of stone tablets marking the founding of the reserve, then runs on to a shaded stop between two rivers that has been a ranger's post since the 1930s and does a proper lunch.

North of there the trees thin out and the plains start. This is where the lions are, in the highest density anywhere in the park, and Satara camp at night is a good deal noisier than Skukuza.

  1. 09:30

    Kruger Tablets

    Visit

    Two bronze tablets, one in English and one in Afrikaans, set into a boulder beside the road to mark the proclamation of the reserve and the National Parks Act that later made it Kruger. Five minutes, at a spot with a long view, and one of the few places in the park you may leave the car.

  2. 11:30

    Tshokwane Trading Post

    Other

    The biggest and busiest picnic site in the park, set up as a ranger's post by Stevenson-Hamilton, under trees between two rivers. Grills to hire, decent toasted sandwiches, and a permanent traffic of people comparing what they have seen since dawn.

  3. 13:30

    Kumana Baobab

    Visit

    A baobab beside a waterhole in a bend of the N'waswitsontso, its trunk about five metres across, standing alone in country where there are no others for a very long way south. Worth the small detour for the tree as much as the game.

  4. 15:30

    Sweni Hide and Viewpoint

    Visit

    East of Satara, a viewpoint you can sit at in the car and a hide you can walk into, both over the Sweni river. Late afternoon is when the plains game comes down to drink, and the light along the watercourse is the best of the day.

With more time: Satara has a restaurant, but the thing to do is buy meat at the camp shop and grill it outside your hut. The lions calling on the plains after dark carry a long way and are the reason people book this camp specifically.

Day 4 in Kruger National Park

One last dawn drive, and out at Orpen

The final morning is the best value of the trip: gate opening, an hour or two north of camp on the river road, then west and out.

The river road north of Satara is a reliable lion road and there is a hide overlooking a dam on it that faces west, which means the morning light is behind you and on the animals.

Orpen gate is about forty five minutes west of Satara and puts you on the road to Hoedspruit or back towards Johannesburg.

  1. 06:00

    Ratel Pan

    Visit

    A west facing hide above a small dam on the river road north of camp, best in the first two hours of daylight. Lion, kingfishers and a steady traffic of plains game coming to drink. Quiet, unglamorous and frequently the best half hour of a Kruger trip.

  2. 09:00

    Breakfast back at camp

    Eat

    Pack and eat at Satara before checking out, then drive west. Leave two hours for the forty five kilometres to the gate, because you will stop.

With more time: With an extra two days, keep going north from Satara to Letaba, where the elephant hall holds the tusks of seven enormous bulls that lived here in the 1970s, and on to the mopane country around Mopani and Shingwedzi, which almost nobody drives and which feels far wilder.

Before you go

Getting there and getting a car

Most people drive from Johannesburg, which is five to six hours to the southern gates on good motorway. The alternative is to fly to Skukuza, in the middle of the southern section, on the daily service from Johannesburg, and pick up a car at the airstrip.

Any car will do. The main roads are tarred and well kept, the gravel loops are fine in a normal saloon, and a high clearance car is a comfort rather than a necessity. What matters far more is the windows: you want ones that open properly, because that is how you hear and smell the park.

Book the car before you book anything else in high season. There is exactly one rental desk inside the park.

Where to sleep

The national park camps are the cheap and the sociable option: fenced compounds with rondavels, safari tents and camping, a shop, a fuel pump and usually a restaurant. Skukuza is the largest and has a river frontage, Lower Sabie is smaller and better placed for game, Satara sits on the open plains and is the one people mean when they talk about hearing lions at night.

Book the camps the day they open for your dates, which is eleven months ahead. School holidays and the whole of July go within hours.

The private reserves along the western boundary, Sabi Sand chief among them, are a different trip entirely: no fences with the park, guided drives, off-road tracking, and ten times the price. They deliver leopard sightings a self-drive trip cannot.

The rules that matter

Gates open at sunrise and close at sunset, and the times change monthly. Being late back into camp carries a fine and, more to the point, the roads are genuinely dangerous after dark. Work out your return leg before you set off, and assume you will be slower than the map says.

Stay in the car except at camps, picnic sites and the marked hides. That is not bureaucratic caution: people are killed in this park most years, usually by elephant or hippo, usually after getting out.

Do not feed anything, especially the monkeys and baboons at picnic sites, and keep car windows up when they are around. Sightings are shared car to car and on the boards in each camp, and are best kept off social media because poachers read it too.

Malaria, and when to go

Kruger is a malaria area. The risk is low in the dry winter and real from November to April. Prophylaxis is a conversation with a doctor before you travel, and repellent, long sleeves at dusk and a net over the bed are worth doing regardless.

The dry season, May to September, is the better time to come for game: the grass is short, the leaves are down and everything has to walk to water. It is also cold at dawn, sometimes near freezing on an open drive, and the middle of the day is pleasant.

The green season from November brings the birds, the newborn antelope and enormous thunderstorms, and the animals are far harder to see.

Kruger rewards patience over ambition. The people who leave disappointed are usually the ones who drove four hundred kilometres a day chasing a checklist and saw the park through a windscreen at speed.

Do the opposite. Pick a river road, drive it slowly at first light, park at a waterhole and turn the engine off. Three nights done that way is worth a fortnight done the other.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Can I really self-drive Kruger, or do I need a guide?
You can drive it yourself and most visitors do. The roads are tarred or well-graded, the camps are signposted, and no special vehicle is needed. One guided drive is still worth booking from your camp: the rangers know where things were yesterday, and the night drives go out after the gates close, which you cannot do alone.
Will I see the Big Five?
Lion, elephant, buffalo and rhino are all likely over three days in the south. Leopard is the one that depends on luck, and the private reserves along the western boundary see far more of them because their guides can drive off road.
How many days do I need?
Three nights is the minimum that feels unhurried, and covers the southern section. Five to seven lets you work north to Letaba and the mopane country, which is emptier and quite different. Anything less than two nights is mostly driving.
Do I need malaria tablets?
Ask a doctor, and expect the answer to depend on the month. The risk is highest in the wet summer from November to April and low in the dry winter, but the park is classified as a malaria area all year.
Is it expensive?
It is the cheapest way to see big game in Africa by a wide margin. A hire car, a park entry fee per day and a national park hut cost a fraction of a guided lodge, and the camps have shops and kitchens so you need not eat out.