Kruger Park & Pvt Reserves Travel Guide




SOUTH AFRICA


AFRICA

The Kruger National Park, the biggest in South Africa, runs through both Mpumalanga and Limpopo Province and is one of the most renowned repositories of bird and animal life in the world. For centuries, the land between the Sabie and Crocodile Rivers was no more than a vast tract of African savannah. Attempts at permanent human settlement had mostly failed as mosquito and tsetse fly infestation made life intolerable, if not perilous.

The Stone Age San, the only Africans able to adapt to the harsh conditions on this untamed environment, given their nomadic, self-sufficient lifestyle, were the first to dwell here. They no longer hunt in the arid areas of the park, but eveidence of their habitation remains in the form of rock artwork, documenting their ingenious survival techniques.

Centuries later, after permanent European settlement, the area became an official hunting ground. This was until President Paul Kruger decided on 26 March 1898, to create a sanctuary for the diminishing populations of local fauna.


This area was then marked out as Africa's first wildlife reserve, and in 1903 was given the name Sabie Game Reserve. 1926 saw expansion as far as the Limpopo River, as the park, now covering almost 2 million hectares, became the Kruger National Park. The park features excellent drives and trails through both dense bush and dry scrub. It is a premier local and international game park, featuring over 250 000 mammalian inhabitants falling into 147 species including all of the 'big five', as well as 507 bird, 336 tree, 49 fish, 34 amphibian and 114 reptile species.

With its subtropical climate, the large habitat variety and a surface area of 19 633 square km, the park is home to a spectacular array of fauna and flora and is undoubtedly the world leader in dynamic environmental management techniques and policies based on experience gained over more than a century.

In the Kruger National Park alone, there are a large number of known cultural heritage sites, including several recorded rock art sites. In the northernmost part of this park, at Thulamela, archaeologists have uncovered a prehistoric site, inhabited from the 15th to mid-17th century. Gold beads, clay spindle whorls, ostrich shell-beads and other artefacts as well as stone ruins were discovered and are probably the remains of a Late Iron Age settlement. The stone-walled settlement has been reconstructed and was officially declared a cultural site museum on 24 September 1996.

The picturesque Masorini Hill site, near the Phalaborwa entrance gate, tells the story of a society that produced and traded iron artefacts during the Late Iron Age era. Although not as old as Thulamela, the site museum offers a glimpse of a unique metalworking and farming culture and the close relationship which once existed between man and nature.
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BALULE RESERVE

KRUGER PARK SURROUNDS

MANYELETI GAME RESERVE

SABIE SANDS GAME RESERVE

THORNYBUSH GAME RESERVE

TIMBIVATI GAME RESERVE
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