It’s dawn, and I’m snared in a lion-induced traffic jam on a one-way bridge over the Sabie River, in Kruger National Park. Cars have stopped to photograph a big male on a sandbank upstream, sunlight burning a halo around his majestic head, so I put the brake on my hired SUV.
I wait.
There’s a twitch in the reeds beside my car when another steps out onto the bridge. Massive, muscled, magnificent. The lioness pauses, staring out towards the male. The reeds move again, and she’s joined by a large cub, and another, and another. And then another huge lioness, her breath rasping, teeth bared as she rounds up the young.
Patrolling the pride, she brushes my car and sends its sensors pinging; her tail lashes my closed window. Instinctively, I hunch over.
Must not. Make. Eye contact.
On a self-drive safari in Kruger National Park a dawn sighting of lions is enough to cause a traffic jam. iStock Sign up for the Traveller Deals newsletter
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“How many more lions can there be?” I ask in a breathy whisper. It’s a question only I can answer because on this self-drive safari, my brother and fellow driver has chosen this morning of all mornings for a sleep-in.
Eleven. That’s the number of lionesses and cubs, and for the next 35 minutes they’ll wait for their matriarch’s cue, gambolling, prowling and simply lying across the bridge, basking in the dawn sunlight.
Humans, you will wait, too.
And wait, I do because animals have the right of way here in one of the world’s most famous wildlife reserves. And because my pounding heart is about to explode from my ribcage.
The lion population of Kruger National Park is estimated to be about 1500. iStock I reflect on the conversation that brought me here. “Why don’t more Australians do self-drive safaris?” Australian crime author Tony Park had asked me months earlier. Park lives on the fringes of Kruger, writing African thrillers based on his camping and driving adventures through Southern Africa.
He threw down the gauntlet, so I’ve come to find out.
My safari itinerary is simple: meet my Estonia-based brother Rorie in Cape Town then fly into Hoedspruit Airport to collect our hire car. The one uniform piece of advice is not to drive alone: “How can you spot animals while you’re driving?”
From here, it’s an hour’s drive to our first night’s stay, Khoka Moya tented camp in Manyeleti Game Reserve, a private concession that blends, fenceless, into the Kruger National Park. The next two nights, we’ll stay inside Kruger at the Satara and Skukuza rest camps, driving between the two on our own game drives.
Photo: Then, for a compare-and-contrast, we’ll surrender the car at little Skukuza Airport and submit to the pleasures of the Sabi Sabi luxury safari group, which operates in the Sabi Sands game reserve, which also flows into the national park.
Old “Red Road” and feisty rhinos Manyeleti Game Reserve, owned and managed by the local Mnisi tribe, is leopard country. iStock The dirt road is littered with piles of poo so huge they can only have been emitted by an elephant. Driving into lesser-known Manyeleti Game Reserve, the elephant excrement bodes well for its claim of Big Five spotting without a hefty price tag. The concession is owned and managed by the local Mnisi tribe, and we’re in leopard country.
Little Khoka Moya camp has 15 permanent unfenced tents with en suites. Screen doors and windows look out into the bush and, in the dry season, elephants are
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