Safari in northeastern South Africa

Kruger or Sabi Sand: which safari should you choose?

The Lowveld, the low, hot plain of the northeast, accounts for most of the country's safaris. Kruger stretches along the Mozambique border over 19,623 km², and you explore it in your own car, from camp to camp, for R692 a day. Sabi Sand, against its western flank with no fence at all since 1993, is visited from a lodge, in an open 4x4 with a guide, off-road and at night. Many travelers combine the two: three lodge nights in Sabi Sand for the leopards, then two or three nights in a SANParks camp in Kruger for the freedom and the savings.

In what order should you visit Kruger and Sabi Sand?

The easiest arrival is through Skukuza, the airport inside Kruger an hour's flight from Johannesburg, where Sabi Sand lodges pick up their guests and rental companies deliver cars. The lodge comes first, because its guided drives teach you to spot the animals, then you take the wheel in Kruger. Spend your first nights at Skukuza or Lower Sabie, in the south where the animals are most numerous, then head north to Satara and its lion plains, and on to the Olifants if you have a week. You leave through Malelane Gate toward the N4 and Johannesburg, four and a half hours by road, or through Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport, near Nelspruit.

What wildlife can you see in Kruger and Sabi Sand?

Kruger has between 1,620 and 1,720 lions, often lying on the tarmac early in the morning, and close to a thousand leopards, which Sabi Sand shows better than anywhere else in the country. Elephants are everywhere, buffalo move in herds in the north and center, and white rhinos are getting scarce in the south, where poachers killed 175 of them in 2025. Around them, you find impalas by the thousands, kudus along the roads, Cape giraffes in the acacias, zebras and wildebeest on the Satara plains, and hippos and crocodiles in the Sabie and Olifants rivers. Wild dogs and cheetahs remain the rare sightings, a little more frequent in Sabi Sand.

When is the best time for a Kruger safari?

The dry season, from May to September, is the right season. The grass is short, the trees are bare and the animals stay along the rivers and waterholes, where you wait for them. Summer, from October to April, brings storms, thick green bush, impala births in November and malaria, which is transmitted from September to May across the Lowveld, with preventive treatment recommended if you sleep there. The South African holidays in December fill Kruger's camps, and the park then applies quotas to day visitors at the southern gates.