The Sabie Game Reserve (as it was then known) was proclaimed in 1892 by the president of the Transvaal Republic, Paul Kruger. The area between the Sabie and Crocodile Rivers were initially set aside for restricted hunting and in 1902 James Stevenson-Hamilton was appointed the first warden.

In May 1926 the Sabie and Shingwedzi Game Reserves were combined to create the Kruger National Park. There are nearly 254 cultural heritage sites in the Kruger including rock art sites.

Homo erectus (early humans) roamed the area between 500 000 and 100 000 years ago and cultural artefacts have been found from 100 000 to 30 000 years ago.

There is lots of evidence of the San and Iron Age people who lived on these lands 1500 years ago and there are historical tales of the Nguni and European explorers and settlers in the Kruger area.

1. Kruger Park is the largest and oldest national park in South Africa. There are 21 state-supported national parks in the country which are managed by the South African National Parks (SANParks). Kruger Park is South Africa’s flagship national park and an iconic safari destination.
2. Kruger Park is massive. It covers an area of 20 000 square kilometres (2 million hectares) which makes it the same size as Israel and slightly smaller than Belgium. The Park is 360 kilometres long and 65 kilometres wide.
3. South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique meet at the most-northerly point of Kruger Park where the Luvuvhu and Limpopo rivers converge at Crookes Corner in the Pafuri triangle. If you stand at Crookes Corner looking north; Mozambique is on your right, Zimbabwe is straight ahead and South Africa is behind you.
4. Kruger Park is almost 100 years old. It was proclaimed a ‘no hunting zone’ in 1898 and eventually proclaimed a national park in 1926. It came about through the merge of Sabie and Shingwedzi game reserves. The first tourist who entered Kruger Park in 1927 was charged an entry fee of £
5. There is evidence that humans occupied the wilderness region over one-and-a-half million years ago. Archaeologists have unearthed tools and artefacts that date back to the Stone Age, including significant rock painting sites. Thulamela in the far north is a stone-walled site built over 500 years ago and dates back to the Iron Age.
6. The national park was named in honour of Paul Kruger, the president of the former Transvaal Republic. Kruger fought hard to have the wilderness area proclaimed a national park and for its precious natural resources to be protected from unchecked hunting and rampant poaching. It took 12 years from when Paul Kruger first tabled the notion in parliament to the region finally being proclaimed.
7. Colonel James Stevenson-Hamilton was the first game warden appointed to oversee the running of what would become Kruger Park. At the time it was Sabie Game Reserve. The former Scottish cavalry officer fought in the Anglo Boer Ware before taking up his role of warden in 1902. Stevenson-Hamilton worked tirelessly for 44 years on establishing Kruger Park as a world-class tourism and conservation entity. His journals are housed in the Stevenson-Hamilton memorial museum at Skukuza Rest Camp.
8. Each year, almost 1 million people visit Kruger Park and at least 80% are South African holidaymakers. Visitors are spoilt for choice for places to stay in Kruger Park. There are 21 SANParks-run establishments and 15 luxury safari lodges that form part of a collection of private concessions in Kruger Park.
9. Kruger Park is home to the famous Big 5 which includes elephant, buffalo, rhino, lion and leopard. But that’s not all! The national park is world-renowned for its outstanding biodiversity, prolific birdlife and vast array of wildlife. Combined, Kruger National Park and Greater Kruger represent one of the finest and most diverse biospheres in Africa. The vast protected wilderness region is the core of the Kruger2Canyons (K2C) and Vhembe UNESCO Man and Biospheres, and the heart of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area (GLTP Treaty, 2002).
10. Kruger Park is the only national park in Africa that has its own international airport and golf course. Skukuza Airport serves scheduled and charter flights from African safari destinations like Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Skukuza Golf Club has a 9-hole golf course that lies on the banks of the Sabie River. It’s unfenced so it’s not uncommon for golfers to tee off with buck, giraffe and zebra on the fairways.
11. The Scientific Services Department at SANParks holds its most important yearly event, the Savanna Science Network Meeting, in the Kruger National Park in autumn. Together with external experts, Scientific Services’ formidable staff of scientists covers a wide range of subjects in their research. Among these are methods for conducting demographic surveys, keeping tabs on vegetation, studying fire behaviour, and conducting airborne game censuses, among others.
12. The wettest season in Kruger occurs during the summer. The downpours that come from this kind of precipitation are often convectional. Typically, mild and hot weather characterises the season (October–April). Warm and mild winters are the norm.
13. The first official research unit in SANParks was established in the 1950s, which led to the founding of the Skukuza Biological Reference Collection. Presently, the collection maintains more than 31,000 specimens of preserved flora and fauna. The reference collection’s primary objective is to provide as an identification service for private nature reserves, staff, and visiting researchers. Taxonomic and anatomical studies, reference book compilation, and tracking of species distribution changes across time and space are some of the other uses for the available material.
14. The Majestic Seven elephants of Kruger National Park, known for their enormous tusks, have captivated and motivated people all around the globe since they were named in the 1970s. Even though ivory hunting and poaching have decimated elephant herds in many African countries, Kruger’s legacy endures.
15. It is said that the largest female tusker in Kruger is MaMerle, a stunning elephant cow. The high-water bridge over the Sabie River was the first place she was spotted (August 14, 2004). During the 2004 elephant census, she was also photographed from a helicopter. She seemed to be carrying twins, who would be around three or four years old. She was named after Merle Whyte, whose husband, Dr. Ian Whyte, worked on large mammal research.
16. While the majority of Kruger’s rock art is located in the park’s southwestern foothills, new evidence reveals that shelter paintings are commonplace across the whole park. In 2007, Conraad de Rosner conducted a rock art study that added 57 sites to the 120 previously known sites, the majority of which were identified by Mike English, the forefather of rock art studies in Kruger. It seems that the San hunter-gatherers of the Late Stone Age created nearly all of Kruger’s rock art.
17. Kruger has been inhabited by humans for a very long time, beginning in the Stone Age. Near Pafuri in the extreme north lies the stone-walled Thulamela Iron Age Site, which dates back about 450 to 500 years. Several artifacts found at the site show that the town was an important node in a vibrant commercial network dominated by Arab merchants off the east coast of Africa at the time.
18. An incredible variety of plant life can be found in Kruger National Park. Roughly 1,982 plant species are known.
19. A common sight in the northern KNP environment is the Adansonia digitata, also known as the Baobab tree. The tree was given its name in recognition of Michel Adanson, a naturalist who observed it for the first time in Senegal, Africa, about 1750. You can see why the baobab tree is called the upside-down tree. The tree’s above-ground root system resembles its branches. Between Satara Rest Camp and Tshokwane Picnic Spot is where you will find the park’s southernmost baobab tree.
20. The Kruger National Parkcovers six different ecosystems, including the famous Baobab sandveld and the dense Mopani scrub. Beautiful knobthorn-marula bushveld greets sightseers as they make their way down the Lebombo hills, and a diverse array of animals call the mixed acacia thicket home. The Combretum-silver clusterleaf woods adorns granite outcrops, providing shade and shelter. Riverine woods, which grow abundantly along the park’s rivers, are home to many species and provide essential resources.
21. Among the 114 reptile species found in KNP are over 3,000 Nile crocodiles and a variety of snakes, the most menacing of which are the black mamba and puff adder.
22. The Kruger National Park is home to around 60 species of lizards. A big and well-known chameleon, the Kruger’s Flapped-Necked Chameleon has a continuous crest of tiny, white triangular tubercles on its belly and throat. Coloration ranges from a light shade of yellow to a variety of greens and browns. There is typically a pale bar on the side and a white belly crest.
23. Sabie, Olifants, Crocodile, Letaba, Luvuvhu, and Limpopo Rivers are among many that flow through the park.
24. There are 517 bird species in Kruger National Park, with 253 permanent inhabitants, 117 seasonal migrants, and 147 nomadic birds.
25. The Park’s protection zones are home to the six big bird species, affectionately referred to as the Big 6. The following are some of these species: the ground hornbill, martial eagle, saddle-billed stork, kori bustard, and the rare and elusive Pel’s fishing owl.
26. The Park is home to 25 to 30 pairs of saddle-billed storks. There were 78 known nests of ground hornbills in 2012, with 50% of those nests being actively used. There were 178 ground hornbill family groups in total at the time.
27. There are nine wilderness routes to choose from in Kruger National Park, some of which go deep into the bush and are almost completely uninhabited. Wilderness areas cover over half of the park’s 2 million hectares, and several route operators provide hikes through these zones. With the goal of providing guests with a true wilderness experience, groups stay in rustic, very rudimentary accommodations; game watching is a secondary attraction.
28. A hut at Malelane Restcamp is named after Harold Trollope, who was an early developer of the Kruger and Addo Elephant Parks, as well as an avid big game hunter and one of the original owners of the Camelthorn Reserve.
29. A very ancient leadwood tree with a traditional Portuguese Cross cut into it stands a few kilometers away from Letaba on the S95. Neither its identity nor its significance have been revealed. The artist Diocleciano Fernandes das Neves, who arrived in Lourenço Marques on October 5, 1855, when he was 25 years old, and went back to Portugal some thirteen years later, is one possible candidate for the carving. He hunted elephants and traded in the interior for those thirteen years. Kruger National Park is located where his trade route once was.

Kruger National Park is the core of the Kruger2Canyons and Vhembe UNESCO Man and Biospheres, and the core of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area (GLTP Treaty, 2002).

The Kruger2Canyons (K2C) Biosphere Reserve was registered in September 2001 in Paris by UNESCO. It became the 411th Biosphere Reserve site to be registered in 94 countries worldwide and acknowledged for its global significance.

Vhembe Biosphere Reserve is located in the north-east of South Africa near the border with Botswana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

The reserve includes the northern part of Kruger National Park, Mapungubwe National Park and World Heritage site, several Provincial Nature Reserves, two recognised centres of biodiversity and endemism (Soutpansberg and Blouberg), and the Makgabeng Plateau, which contains more than 1 000 rock art sites.

Kruger Park is massive and where you stay depends on what interests you and what you want to see. Basically, you can use this guideline:

• If birds are more important than big herds of animals and you’ve got time to travel, stay in the far north in one of the most spectacular corners in Kruger around Punda Maria and Pafuri.
• If you want elephants, no crowds and can tolerate very hot, humid and arid conditions; stay in the northern section around Olifants and Letaba.
• If you want to see great sightings of lion and the other Big Cats and enjoy great game viewing without the safari crowds, stay in the central section around Orpen and Satara.
• If you want to see the Big 5 and as many animals as possible in the shortest space of time and without travelling long distances, stay in the southern section between Pretoriuskop, Lower Sabie and Skukuza.

Northern Kruger is vastly different from southern and central Kruger Park and attracts a different set of wildlife and nature lovers. It’s receives very little annual rainfall and is semi-arid and stark. It has its own appeal though, with vast barren landscapes dotted with shrub mopane.

A redeeming feature of northern Kruger is five major rivers forge a path across the valley, the two notable rivers being Olifants and Letaba. These permanent water sources create a tapestry of lush riverine forests and attract animals to their fertile river banks. Game viewing along the river banks is fantastic and you’ll likely to see leopard in the massive sycamore fig, tamboti and apple leaf trees that line the banks.

Northern Kruger is also home to the ‘big fellows’. It’s home to almost 60 percent of the total hippo population of Kruger and at last count, there are over 9 000 elephants in the northern belt. You’re also edging into birder’s paradise in the Far North so if you’re an avid birder, you won’t be disappointed as bird life is prolific in northern Kruger.

The area around Olifants Rest Camp is famously known for its Big Tuskers, the incredible elephants who are part of the Magnificent 7 for their record-breaking, astoundingly-long tusks.

Northern Kruger stretches more or less from Olifants Rest Camp to Shingwedzi Rest Camp. Accommodation options are somewhat limited but because this eco-zone is far off the beaten track, tourist numbers are low anyway.

Pros of staying in northern Kruger

• low tourist numbers and ‘almost private’ animal sightings
• great game viewing on the banks of the five major rivers
• excellent birding
• strong populations of elephant and hippo
• unobstructed game viewing in stunted mopane veld

Cons of staying in northern Kruger

• further to drive from Johannesburg and Nelspruit
• fewer rest camps
• hot, humid temperatures in summer
• stark, semi-arid terrain