Which Kruger camp should you book?

Our first reader photo competition opens today. Send us your best African wildlife photo and you could win a pair of Vortex Diamondback 10x42 binoculars, worth R6,999, courtesy of Whylo Distributors. More prizes to be announced.

Entry is free and open worldwide: sign up to The Dispatch and email up to 3 photos to [email protected] with "Photo competition" in the subject line. Invite a friend to sign up and you can send 1 more photo, up to 5 in total. Entries close on 30 November.

Skukuza and Lower Sabie sit 40km apart on the same river, share the same leopard-rich H4-1 and charge the same rates, yet they deliver 2 completely different holidays. One is a small town with a bank, a butcher and a golf course; the other is a deck over the Sabie where the river does the entertaining.

You are not choosing between animals, you are choosing between kinds of base, and only 1 of the 2 books out a year ahead. We drew the line camp by camp, including the itinerary that uses both.

Kruger's 12 main rest camps are spread along 350km of park, and they are not interchangeable: each sits in different country and suits a different traveller. Pick well and the game is on your doorstep; pick badly and you spend the holiday driving 2 hours each morning to reach it.

The whole decision comes down to a single trade between the busy, game-rich south and the empty, wilder north. We matched all 12 camps to the traveller each one is for, so you can skip straight to yours.

The camps inside Kruger book out months ahead, and the standard advice is that staying outside the park is second best. It can be the smarter play, provided you treat the gateway towns as different doors into different parks.

Sleep 15 minutes from a gate and you keep the cool early hours that produce the sightings; sleep an hour away and you have traded them for a nicer pool. We mapped which town serves which gate, and which base fits which trip.

This week it's the animal with the worst reputation in the bush, and the least deserved. The spotted hyena isn't mainly a scavenger: it kills most of what it eats, as much as 90 to 95% of its food in prey-rich parts of Kruger, and lions steal from hyenas far more often than the other way round. It isn't a dog either; its family sits closer to cats and mongooses.

A clan can be up to about 80 strong, and the females run it: the lowest-ranking female outranks every male, and cubs inherit their mother's rank. Hyenas have the strongest bone-crushing bite of any mammal, beat lions and leopards on problem-solving tests, and laugh when they're stressed, not amused. Look it up in Wild Timbavati, our free guide to about 100 Lowveld species, and read why it deserves a second look on the site.

Most of the Timbavati's well-known lodges charge several times as much, but Bateleur, a small camp in the middle of the reserve, shares the same open Big Five country, unfenced from Kruger. Its thatch-and-canvas tents look straight into the bush, and the deck and pool sit above a dry riverbed.

The guiding leans into what this quiet corner does best: big cats, elephant and walking with an armed guide. From R8,206 (about $500) per person sharing a night, it is one of the best-value ways into a private Greater Kruger safari, without the gloss.

Step out of the car and Kruger changes character: on a wilderness trail you sleep 3 nights in a rustic camp with no electricity and no signal, walking up to 20km a day through country day visitors never reach, 8 guests and an armed ranger at a time.

There are 7 trails to choose from, running from the granite koppies of the Wolhuter in the south to the baobabs and rock art of Nyalaland in the far north, and in their entire history no trailist has ever been injured. By private-safari standards they are remarkable value, if you can get 1 of the 8 places.

November is when the first rains turn the bush green and the big herds spread out across the floodplains. This week's clip: a buffalo herd wading through the water near Sable Alley in Botswana's Khwai area, filmed from the air.

That's issue 13. If it was useful, forward it to the friend who keeps a SANParks tab open in booking season. If it wasn't, reply and tell me why. I will read it.

Murray Walker
Editor, Safari Dispatch

Safari Dispatch is an independent safari guide, not a booking agency. Rates and offers were checked at the time of writing; confirm directly with the lodge before booking.