Kruger: The Verdict

Tsendze: another side of Kruger

I was starting to think I'd been a bit unfair to Kruger. I had come here expecting crowds and a park that felt too commercial for me. But up north we had found quiet roads, space to stop and time to sit at sightings. And I enjoyed it. Maybe I'd been judging this enormous park by the parts that didn't suit me. Now we were at Tsendze, with two nights here before moving on to Letaba and further south. Before leaving, I wanted to work out what had changed, what hadn't, and whether I was wrong.

We hadn't driven far from Tsendze when we spotted a couple of vultures on the tar. We were on the H14 towards Phalaborwa, and the birds were about a hundred metres beyond a road-closed sign. As we drew closer, we saw what had brought them there: an elephant carcass off to our right. About seven or eight vultures were already feeding. We didn't know what had caused the elephant's death, but we spent quite a while watching. We would return later that day and again the following morning.

Sitting there, my argument against Kruger became a little uncomfortable. There were no shops, no restaurants and no traffic around me. For half an hour I had the sighting to myself, with nobody behind me wanting my position. The things I disliked about Kruger might still exist, but did they represent the whole park? If this was also Kruger, perhaps I had been painting with a brush that was far too broad.

Lions along the S50 and S143

Driving along the S50, close to the S143, we spotted a pride of lions almost by chance. There was a narrow opening between the bushes and we only just caught sight of them. They were well back from the road, somewhere between a hundred and two hundred metres by my estimate. Luckily, we had the 800mm lens with us. It brought them much closer, although the overcast light gave the camera a bit of trouble keeping them in focus.

We watched for about twenty minutes before they got up and moved off into the bush. They looked as though they might be going to hunt, but we couldn't know what would happen next. They were heading towards the S143, so we tried that road, scanning up and down for another glimpse. There were a few single blue wildebeest bulls around, and we watched their behaviour as well. They seemed relaxed, although that didn't necessarily mean they knew the lions were nearby.

The area was fairly open between the bushes and we could see a good distance in, so I gave the S143 another try. We even had other people helping us look. But the lions had disappeared. That was the end of this sighting, without the closer view we had hoped for. Maybe we would find them again that afternoon; maybe another day would bring a better opportunity. For now, there was more of the park to explore.

Back to the carcass, then a quiet night

Before returning to Tsendze, we stopped at the elephant carcass again. The handful of vultures from the morning had become what looked like hundreds. A lot more of the carcass had been eaten over the course of the day. Earlier, we had stopped at Mopani and told a ranger about it. He mentioned anthrax as a possible cause because there had been a couple of cases in the area. That was a possibility, not a diagnosis: we still didn't know what had killed this elephant.

Back at Tsendze, the question about Kruger being too commercial became harder to avoid. This is a rustic camp near Mopani, with no electricity at the campsites, no big restaurants and no large tourism complex around me. Just me, Motsumi and whatever sounds the bush would make outside that night. If somebody had dropped me here without telling me where I was, I wouldn't have known I was in Kruger.

This was exactly the kind of camping I usually went looking for. So when I said Kruger was too commercial, which Kruger did I mean? Tsendze certainly didn't feel that way. Perhaps that was the biggest lesson so far: there wasn't only one Kruger experience. I might simply have spent years choosing the wrong one for me.

Leaving Tsendze: hyenas and vultures

The next morning it was time to leave Tsendze for Letaba. During our stay we had also met Kevin and Donna from The Buffalo Overlander, who share their travels in their truck, The Buffalo. Kevin does beer tastings and ranks them on his beer ladder, so I gave him an Impala from Mozambique to try. It isn't one of my favourites either. His verdict was clear enough: it wasn't going on the board and he wouldn't spend his own money on it. But it was still a beer!

We made one last visit to the elephant carcass before moving on, and it had another surprise for us. This time the hyenas were feeding while the vultures tried to get a share. Whenever the birds came too close, the hyenas chased them away. This one sighting had given us something different on every visit, from a few birds on the first morning to a much larger gathering and now the hyenas at the meal.

Spotted hyenas can hunt, but they are also well equipped to make use of a carcass, crushing and digesting bone that other scavengers leave behind. The white-backed vultures find food by sight and also watch the activity of other scavengers. Birds dropping down to feed can attract more birds, helping explain how a handful becomes a gathering like this. Finding the food and managing to get a mouthful were clearly two different things.

One vulture carried a yellow wing tag. That marker allows researchers to recognise the same bird when it is seen again. Reports can help build a picture of its movements, feeding areas and survival. A photograph with a readable tag number can therefore contribute something useful beyond the sighting itself.

Letaba and a bigger test

Leaving Tsendze felt a bit like leaving the easy part of the experiment. If you enjoy quiet, simple camping, it is an easy place to fall for. Letaba was a bigger rest camp and, I thought, a better test of my opinion. My criticism had never really been about the bush. It was about what happened when you put a lot of people and tourism infrastructure into it. Could I still feel connected to the place in a more developed camp? Did convenience automatically make somewhere too commercial?

Watching elephants feed also gave me a reason to look more closely at the landscape. In the documentary I discuss the differences between the drier northern mopane country and the wetter south, and research showing how elephant diets vary across those areas and between seasons. The figures aren't a fixed menu for every elephant. They illustrate how different life can be within the same park.

There is even a record of those changes in ivory. Research using Kruger tusks, including specimens from the Letaba Elephant Hall, examines chemical signatures in their growth layers to trace changes between grass and woody plants over an elephant's life. Elephants also carry swallowed seeds away and pass them in their dung. They can help move trees across the landscape, while also damaging or killing large trees through their feeding. A population figure alone doesn't explain all of that. Even an ordinary feeding sighting gives you something to think about.

By then I had been turning the same question over all day. Had I judged Kruger by the parts I didn't like? Most probably, yes. I had found space, time and quiet roads. A crowded leopard sighting with fifty cars would still irritate me, but that wasn't what I had experienced up here. Kruger hadn't completely changed my mind yet; it had made my original opinion much harder to defend. In between all this, there was still work to do: downloading the previous two or three days of footage before the memory cards filled up. The office was in the bush.

Rain, Engelhard Dam and the road to Olifants

At ten to six on our first morning at Letaba, it looked as though we were first at the gate. I enjoy that little wait before sunrise, when everyone is waiting for the same thing. Then the gate opens, the vehicles move out and the day begins properly. This morning the rain had settled in. The light was softer, the roads quieter, and the bush had that fresh smell after rain. We had nowhere particular we needed to be, just a day to drive, watch and see what turned up.

At Engelhard Dam, on the S46 near Letaba, a sign at the dam wall caught my attention. It explained that the dam had been funded to help wildlife, while acknowledging that the ecological consequences had not been fully understood or taken into account. That raised a question worth exploring: could an attempt to help conservation also have serious consequences? I mentioned that I was looking further into that story on the Tusk & Tyre Facebook page. For the moment, we carried on through the park.

On the S93 towards Olifants, I realised I was thinking less about the next sighting. I had begun to enjoy the stretches between them: watching the bush and not knowing what might be around the next bend. Perhaps that was something I had missed before, when the crowds and busy sightings had dominated my idea of Kruger. There was still room here to slow down.

Half an hour with three hyenas

We were travelling at about fifteen kilometres an hour when one of three resting hyenas lifted its head. If it hadn't done that, we would probably have driven straight past them. They were lying down, sleeping, waking and looking around. We stopped and watched, with the birds calling around us. My bush choir. There were no cars gathered at the sighting; one vehicle passed from the other direction and apparently didn't notice them.

After a while, the hyenas became curious about us. They were looking at the vehicle and smelling the air. Then something caught their attention. I heard cracking in the trees beside us, but I couldn't tell what had disturbed them. They became alert, looking around, and eventually moved off into the bush. I didn't know whether they had heard or smelled something I couldn't. That uncertainty was part of what we had just watched.

By then it was around half past ten, about four and a half hours into a rainy, overcast morning. The sightings had been fairly quiet, but those hyenas had made the day for me. I had spent almost half an hour there on my own. Another vehicle arrived only as they were disappearing. No queue, nobody trying to get past, just time to sit and watch.

Kruger had started to grow on me, and I didn't think one spectacular sighting was responsible. It was the consistency: elephants along the river, a Southern Ground-Hornbill in the grass, a movement in the distance that made us stop for another look. These moments kept giving me something I hadn't expected from the park: space, time and the freedom to watch. The Kruger in my head and the one I was experiencing were no longer quite the same place.

Nest builders, flood marks and morning coffee

There was plenty to watch on a smaller scale too. We stopped with birds building a nest, one repeatedly dropping down for a twig or small branch and taking it back into the tree. I thought we were probably watching a male and female, although that was my interpretation rather than something I had established. Talking to the camera while trying to film their movements meant I kept missing shots. Even so, it was beautiful to sit and watch them working.

Crossing the Letaba River bridge brought the year's floods back into view. Looking at the marks, I reckoned the 2026 water level had been roughly a metre higher than in 2000. The washouts along the river showed how much water had been through. It was another reminder of how different this landscape had looked only months earlier.

We turned onto the S47 loop under an overcast sky. I hoped the sun might break through later, but for now I had my morning coffee, the bush and a gravel road ahead. That was a pretty good combination. The drive didn't need a big animal around every corner to be enjoyable.

My opinion was not complete

As the trip approached what I then expected to be our last full day and night in Kruger, the answer was becoming more complicated than yes or no. There were still things I didn't like. For the kind of travelling I enjoy, it felt too easy: there weren't the same challenges in the roads, the destination or getting there. Sightings etiquette could still frustrate me too. An encounter the previous day had reminded me of that, although I didn't go into the details in the film.

I still preferred getting away from people and having a sighting to myself. That might sound selfish, but it hadn't changed. What had changed was the idea that my preferences somehow defined the whole park. Punda Maria had shown me one version, and Tsendze something completely different from what I had expected. Letaba was another experience again: bigger, busier, with more noise around the campsite at night.

The variety was what surprised me. My original opinion wasn't simply wrong, but it certainly wasn't complete. I could still recognise the things that bothered me while accepting that they weren't all Kruger had to offer.

Towards Satara: a lioness on the hunt

We managed to get a night at Satara, giving the trip one more test. Waiting at Letaba's gate on our final morning there, I was heading into a busier part of Kruger to see what it would bring. Along the way we found a lone lioness, quite far from us, but close enough for the 800mm lens to give us a good look. She wore a collar and stood watching for a while.

Then the sighting became gripping. She was stalking waterbuck that didn't seem to know she was there. Some were lying down, and she disappeared into the grass as we watched. Eventually the waterbuck started running. It looked as though they had detected her, and the hunt failed. She would have to start again. We had watched the attempt, without knowing how it would end.

Afterwards, I wondered aloud whether she might be alone because she had cubs. I made clear that this was only an assumption; I didn't know her circumstances and we hadn't seen cubs. About twenty kilometres from Satara the weather had turned overcast again, after a lovely morning. We carried on to see what the rest of the day would offer.

The clock, the Timbavati and an elephant warning

The afternoon brought plenty of plains game, including zebra, blue wildebeest and impala, while the bigger sightings were proving harder to find. We were driving beside the Timbavati River, enjoying the bush, but also watching the clock. At half past three the GPS still showed forty kilometres to camp. At my usual slow pace on gravel, that meant about two hours of driving and only half an hour to spare.

There was another complication: the S127 was closed, and the GPS wanted to send us that way. I had to keep an eye on both the route and the time. I was still hoping to find something interesting, though. Birds building a nest would have done perfectly well; it didn't have to be a big animal.

Then we came around a corner and found a large herd of elephants. A bull on the left side of the road gave a head shake that I took as a warning to keep clear, while the rest of the herd was on the other side. With camp still ahead of us, we allowed ourselves about ten minutes to watch. As we moved slowly past, a youngster ran across the road. At just that moment Motsumi's air system released through its dump valve, startling him a little. In the end, everything was all right, but the timing wasn't ideal.

Buffalo, a rhino and the last campfire

Once you've calculated the distance, the time left and the pace needed to make the gate, that is usually when Kruger tests the plan. A huge herd of buffalo began crossing the gravel road. There must have been well over a hundred. We stopped with the other vehicles and waited for them to pass.

Not long afterwards, we saw our first rhino of the trip. It would also be the only one. Naturally, the clock suddenly seemed a little less important. We stopped, took photographs and filmed for a while. You can plan your drive back as carefully as you like, but the wildlife has no interest in your timetable.

We made it to camp with fifteen minutes to spare. Motsumi was set up, the fire was going, and our last night in Kruger lay ahead. On the menu were a Cattle Baron rump steak, a little wors and a garlic broodjie. The next morning we would be up at sparrow's fart, heading towards Skukuza and eventually back to the concrete jungle. For now, it was time to enjoy the fire.

Leaving Satara between seasons

The last morning arrived with us waiting at Satara's gate. I had entered Kruger with a definite opinion: too busy, too commercial and not really my kind of place. From the north through Tsendze, Letaba and now Satara, the park had shown me things I hadn't expected. I wanted to leave the final answer until we drove out, but one thing was already clear. I was going home with a different opinion from the one I had brought in.

There was still something small to think about on the way. Over the previous days I had noticed plenty of elephant, buffalo and antelope dung on the roads, but no dung beetles. At first that worried me. After looking into it, I realised the timing mattered: we were travelling at the end of September, between seasons, before many dung beetles become active with the rains.

Rain softens the soil, temperatures rise, and these little recyclers begin moving dung into the ground. Their work also helps create opportunities for plant growth. Not seeing them on this visit didn't mean they had disappeared. It was another reminder that we were seeing a particular moment in Kruger, with more life waiting for the first proper rains.

The verdict: will I be back?

So, was I wrong about Kruger? In some ways, no. Busy sightings, traffic and the more commercial side of the park still aren't what I go looking for when I head into the bush. I hadn't stopped valuing quiet camps, space and time on my own.

But I had an amazing experience in the north. Places like Tsendze were something I had never expected from Kruger, and I could no longer let the parts I disliked stand for the whole park. My original impression had left out far too much.

Will I be back? Most definitely yes. Maybe just not to the Kruger I knew before.

I hope you enjoyed the journey as much as I enjoyed making it. Stay safe, be humble, and always make a difference. This is Corné signing out for Tusk & Tyre, Kruger National Park. See you in the next one.