Southern Africa’s top 21 parks

Southern Africa has some of the finest wildlife parks in the world. We’ve rounded up the top 21 parks in our special birthday issue, on sale now.

Kruger National Park is simply enormous. It comprises nearly two-million hectares of South African bush and is also part of the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Park. The country’s most popular bush destination, Kruger offers the ultimate wildllife experience, with an unrivalled diversity of large mammals.

he 1 000-square-kilometre marine reserve of Table Mountain National Park stretches in a 10-kilometre band from Mouille Point lighthouse, past world-class beaches, around the Peninsula and Cape Point to Surfer’s Corner in Muizenberg.

De Hoop Nature Reserve, on the southern Cape coast in the Western Cape, is unrivalled for rare and endangered flora and fauna.

Garden Route National Park includes the formerly separate national parks of Wilderness andTsitsikamma, the Knysna Lakes area and other land under Sanparks management, as well as about 52 500 hectares of newly proclaimed land.

Conveniently close to Port Elizabeth, Addo Elephant National Park offers the most affordable wildlife viewing in the Eastern Cape and is the only park in the world that’s home to the Big Seven.

As Africa’s oldest game reserve, Hluhluwe-Imfolozi was the springboard for the survival of the white rhino, and it’s still one of the best places to see them. Set in the heart of Zululand, the reserve offers 96 000 hectares of wilderness home to a huge diversity of wildlife.

iSimangaliso Wetland Park, South Africa’s third largest park, lies in Northern KwaZulu-Natal and encompasses eight interlinking ecosystems and a huge range of habitat

West Coast National Park, is a haven for birdwatching enthusiasts and naturalists. Langebaan Lagoon, at the heart of the park, supports 60 000 birds of at least 200 species.

In the far northwestern corner of the Northern Cape, the Ai-Ais/Richtersveld Transfrontier National Park is a beautiful desert wildnerness that harbours extraordinary biodiversity.

Located on the western border of North West Province, Madikwe Game Reserve offers 75 000 hectares of malaria-free wilderness.

The vast, silent Kgalagadi Transfrontier National Park is one of the largest conservation areas of this scale in the world. The 3,6-million hectares of red dunes and scrubby flora straddle the border marked by the dry Nossob Rive bed, between Botswana and South Africa.

The Central Kalahari is Botswana’s largest game reserve at 52 800 square kilometres. It’s the wild, unforgiving heart of Southern Africa and just about as far off the beaten track as you can get in the region.

A great mosaic of floodplains and a staggering variety of ecosystems make Moremi Game Reserve‘s wildlife among the richest in Africa.

Chobe National Park is legendary among those seeking the ultimate African wildlife experience. The park has one of the greatest concentrations of game in Africa, and has recently been incorporated into a giant transfrontier conservation area known as Kaza.

Namib-Naukluft National Park in Namibia is a formidable vastness which sustains many strange plants and animals adapted to life on the edge.

Etosha National Park is host to spectacular wildlife in its massive 6 000-square-kilomtre mineral pan.

Golden Gate Highlands National Park, named after its golden sandstone cliffs, offers beautiful scenery in the Eastern Free State

Mountain Zebra National Park was established in 1937 to save a species from extinction – today there are more than 1 000 mountain zebras in the park, as well as cheetahs, 216 bird species and some of the world’s biggest earthworms.

Karoo National Park outside Beaufort West in the Western Cape spans some 73000 hectares of the Great Karoo. It’s a landscape of alluring table-top plateaus and thirsty flats, of spiny veld and splintered rock.

Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe has highest diversity of mammals for any national park in the world, with around 108 species and over 400 types of birds, including 50 raptors, and an estimated 30 000 elephants.

Zimbabwe’s Mana Pools National Park is 2 196 square kilometres, but is part of an unfenced wildlife estate that runs from Kariba in the west to the Mozambique border in the east.

Would you add any more Southern African parks to this list?

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