Visitors to the Kruger National Park in South Africa go there for a variety of reasons.
Whether they are doing an autonomous safari or a guided safari, one of the main reasons is to find and photograph animals like the ‘super-seven’. The super seven are the most sought after animals and are the ones that visitors mark on the observation boards at all Kruger campgrounds each day: lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo, rhinoceros (collectively known as the ‘big five’) and adding cheetah plus wild dog to form the ‘super-seven’ animals of Africa.
We have been visiting the Kruger Park since 1995 and spent 400 days in all the main and safari camps doing photo safaris. During this time, we discovered the ‘South Circle’, the area between the Crocodile Bridge and Lower Sabie campgrounds in the southeast corner of the Kruger.
This area must be the most underrated in the entire park. We have heard some people say that they only use the Crocodile Bridge gate to enter the park so they can get to the ‘real Kruger’ (from Lower Sabie north). Well, in our humble opinion, the section of roads known as the ‘South Circle’ must be the most productive for super-seven sightings in the entire Kruger Park.
We have seen the five large animals on four different occasions, all in this area of the southern circle. One day we had entered the park at 06:00 and at 10:00 we had seen the big five. On another occasion, we saw the big five (including the death of a lion), three leopards, as well as wild dogs and cheetahs, the super-seven, all in one day on the circular roads!
We have our own observation board at home where we plot all of our Kruger super-seven sightings and there is a very high concentration of observation pins in this South Circle. We have marked all the lion, leopard, wild dog and cheetah sightings, but only large herds of buffalo, rhino and elephant as there are too many of these sightings to fit on our map!
He; you want to know what these paths are and why this circular area is so good for watching games, right?
Well, the southern circle included the H4-2 tar road and the S28 dirt road, both heading north from Crocodile Bridge to Lower Sabie and forming a circle. There are also two short roads in this southern circle: the S130 and S137 Duke roads.
There seems to be a combination of three things that makes this area of the South Circle so rich in games:
• water is available most of the year, as the area is located near two perennial rivers (in a straight line, it is only 20 kilometers from the Sabie River to the Crocodile River in the southern circle);
• basalt plains retain water in pots for long periods; and
• the area contains sweetgrass, which is favored by zebra, buffalo, impala and wildebeest, and it is these herbivores that in turn feed the predators.
So when it comes to the ‘best game viewing routes’, this must be number one in Kruger Park – give it a try on your next Kruger photo safari!