News Archives - Kruger Untamed

Silent sentinels – the trees of the Kruger

Discover the stories behind some of our most magnificent tree species The Kruger National Park has 404 recorded tree species, and the stretch of wilderness that Tshokwane River Camp and Satara Plains Camp sit within contains some of the most remarkable of them. They’ve been here longer than the park itself, longer than any name given to this land, longer than the roads that now pass between them. This is our homage to some of them… The Kruger National Park’s trees are the unsung heroes of this legendary landscape. The Shangaan people who’ve lived alongside them for centuries didn’t catalogue

Camping Safari or Glamping? Inside a Kruger Untamed Camp

Key Takeaways What Is a Camping Safari? A camping safari means sleeping under canvas in or beside a wildlife area, in an experience built around game drives, guiding and proximity to the animals rather than around the accommodation itself. It spans a wide spectrum, from basic mobile setups where camp is struck and moved daily, to fully-serviced luxury tented camps with proper beds and en-suite bathrooms. By that definition, what Kruger Untamed offers is absolutely a camping safari. The canvas is real, the wilderness is real, and for guests expecting a scout camp, the reality tends to produce a particular

The big cats of the Kruger

Tales of speed, stealth and sovereignty In Tsonga, the language of the Shangaan people, to be brave is to be a lion – ku va ngala. To fight with everything you have is ku lwa xingala, to fight like a lion. The leopard, yingwe, has never been simply an animal to the people who’ve shared this landscape with it, but a symbol of unseen power, of stealth and authority that operates beyond the visible. And the cheetah, xikankanka, crosses the open grassland at a speed the eye can barely follow, the fastest land animal on earth, feared and revered in

Sunset game drive in Kruger National Park

Why the Kruger keeps calling you back

The difference between seeing the wild and truly knowing it There’s a version of the Kruger National Park that most first-time visitors experience, and it’s a genuinely wonderful thing: the big sightings, the great sunsets, the dawning realisation that this landscape is more extraordinary than anything they’d been led to expect. They leave happy, slightly dazed, and already vaguely aware that two or three nights was not quite enough. And then, if they’re paying attention to that feeling, they come back. And the second time is different in ways that are difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it,

The Kruger in spring: a different kind of extraordinary

September and October bring their own rewards The Kruger National Park in September and October is a different proposition from the park that winter visitors experience, and the difference is worth seeking out. The dry season has done its work: the waterholes are at their lowest, the vegetation stripped back to its bones, and the wildlife concentrated in ways that make for game viewing of extraordinary intensity… Layered on top of all of this is something else entirely, a landscape that is visibly, palpably building towards something. The dust is thicker, the animals more restless, the afternoons charged with the

Guest enjoying a Kruger Untamed safari experience at Satara Plains Camp

Share Your Kruger Untamed Story & Win a Stay for 2 at Satara Plains Camp

Every Kruger Untamed journey is different. For some, it’s the thrill of a lion sighting at sunrise. For others, it’s the simple pleasure of coffee around the fire as the bush awakens. It might be dining beneath a canopy of stars, falling asleep to the sounds of the wild in your canvas tent, or discovering a moment that perfectly captures the spirit of untamed adventure. Whatever your experience was, we want to see it. Enter our Kruger Untamed competition. Enter the #KrugerUntamedMyWay Competition We’re inviting past and current guests of Tshokwane River Camp and Satara Plains Camp to share their

Traveller dressed in warm layers during an early morning winter safari in Kruger National Park

What to pack when the temperature drops

The African winter has a way of surprising even the most seasoned travellers There is a misconception that follows the Kruger National Park around the world, and it arrives most reliably in the luggage of first-time international visitors: the assumption that Africa is always warm. It isn’t, and not in a polite, slightly-chilly way. On an open game viewer at six in the morning in July, with the temperature sitting in the single digits and the vehicle moving through semi darkness, the cold is a genuine, committed, fully present participant in the experience. Guests who arrive having packed for a

Winter sunrise over the Kruger National Park Lowveld landscape

What winter does to the Kruger

The dry season transforms one of Africa’s greatest wilderness areas into something extraordinary People who have only experienced the Kruger National Park in summer and those who have experienced it in winter are, in a meaningful sense, talking about two different places. The transformation that the dry season brings to this landscape is profound and cumulative, unfolding gradually across May and June until it reaches its most intense and most rewarding expression in the deep winter months of July and August. To be in the Kruger in winter is to experience the park at its most elemental, and to understand,

What the wilderness does to you

The Kruger has a way of quietly rearranging those who spend time in it There’s a moment that almost every guest at Kruger Untamed describes, though each one finds different words for it. It arrives somewhere between the first game drive and the last morning coffee, between the tracker reading the ground and the lion moving through the gold of late afternoon light. It’s the moment the wilderness stops being scenery and becomes something else entirely. Something that reaches in… The silence arrives first. Most people arrive carrying the weight of the world they have just left be it the

When the land speaks, we listen

An update on Satara Plains Camp and what the Kruger’s exceptional rains mean for the 2026 season The 2026 season is under way at Tshokwane River Camp, and the wilderness is delivering everything we know and love about this extraordinary time of year. The bush is alive, the game viewing is exceptional, and the first guests of the season are already carrying home experiences that are difficult to put into words and impossible to forget. At Satara Plains Camp, the story is a different one this year, and we want to share it with you. The Situation The exceptional rainfall

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