Sabi Sand Nature Reserve

Sabi Sands shares a 50km/30mi unfenced border with Kruger National Park and offers the best wildlife viewing in South Africa. The area is divided into individual private game reserves, all offering the ultimate Big Five experience, luxury accommodation, great service and excellent food. Sabi Sands is an extension of Kruger National Park and has the same relatively thick vegetation consisting of woodland savannah. Two rivers run through the reserve, providing water. The riverine vegetation makes an excellent habitat for leopard and other wildlife.

With a good population of highly habituated leopards, Sabi Sands is one of the best places in Africa to see these normally elusive cats. Lion and cheetah are also easily seen.

Sabi Sand Game Reserve offers excellent wildlife viewing. This is especially true of the big cats. All of the Big Five are usually seen in a two to three-day visit. Off-road driving assures quality sightings, particularly of the habituated resident predators. Sabi Sand is part of the vast Greater Kruger ecosystem, which makes for a very authentic wildlife experience.

Sabi Sands is possibly the best place in Africa to see leopard. Both the quantity and quality of sightings is superb. This is a place where you can see leopard behavior such as males marking and patrolling their territory or females interacting with their cubs. Wild dog sightings are less common, but if they are denning in the area, it is often possible to spend time with these social pack animals.

With more than 300 bird species on its list, Sabi Sands is a great birding destination. Guides tend to be very knowledgeable about birds and everything else. The combination of walking and driving safaris in the private reserves is also very suitable to birding. The emphasis in Sabi Sands is, however, on mammals and the Big Five. It would be advisable to book private game drives if you are a birder. Migratory birds are present from November to April.